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THE EEVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 



THE REVOLUTION IN 
VIRGINIA 

By H. J. ECKENRODE, Ph.D. 

ASSOCIATE FKOPESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND HISTORY 
IN RICHMOND COLLEGE 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1916 



1/5 £7: 



COPYRIGHT, 1016, BY HAMILTON J. KCKENRODE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published March iQib 



41 -./^- 

MAR 20 1916 

/v ■ / 



2- ^^ 



PREFACE 

The present work is chiefly based on the original sources 
of information in the archives department of the Virginia 
State Library. This great collection has been used before, 
of course, and some of the papers are in print, but I think 
that no one but myself has ever examined it exhaustively 
with a view to such a book as The Revolution in Virginia. 
I have given references to the manuscript collection as it 
is now classified in those specific cases where references 
may be of use; in the case of generahzations I have fol- 
lowed the inferences which I have drawn from my study 
of the mass of material. 

I am under obligations to Mr. William G. Stanard, of 
the Virginia Historical Society; Dr. W. E. Dodd, of the 
University of Chicago; Dr. D. R. Anderson, of Richmond 
College; and Dr. Douglas S. Freeman, for reading the 
manuscript and making useful suggestions. My debt to 
Mr. James D. Wise, who spent much time in aiding me to 
make revisions, is so great that I am at a loss to devise a 
fitting acknowledgment. 

H. J. ECKENRODE. 



iX 



CONTENTS 

I. Beginning of the Revolution .... 1 
II. The Radicals 32 

III. The Struggle for Norfolk . . . .58 

IV. The County Committees 96 

V. Convention and Committee of Safety . . 123 

VI. The Democratic Republic 157 

VII. Rule of the Council 174 

VIII. The Fall of Jefferson 195 

IX. Spread of Disaffection 232 

X. Military Operations 261 

XI. End of the War 276 

XII. The Progress of Democracy .... 294 
Index 303 



THE REVOLUTION IN 
VIRGINIA 

CHAPTER I 

BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 

The American Revolution was a movement with two 
distinct aspects. On one side it was marked by the union 
of hitherto independent communities and the beginning 
of common institutions and of a common life. The other 
phase witnessed the progress of the revolt within the colo- 
nies themselves and the creation of their individual gov- 
ernments. The method of historians in treating of the 
Revolution generally has been to take the most striking 
incidents in the history of the colonies in the years imme- 
diately preceding 1776 and join them to an account of the 
workings of the Continental Congress and the campaigns 
of the Continental army. The internal growth of the new- 
made States is almost entirely ignored, probably because 
in some instances it is not well known. But in this stage 
of American history, when the national life was so feeble, 
the progress of events in Massachusetts and Virginia was 
more important than the deliberations of Congress. No 
adequate account has been given of the spiritual change 
which came over Massachusetts and Virginia in the Rev- 
olutionary epoch and which had such great influence on 
the development of the nation. Because the early history 



2 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

of the individual States has not been well worked out, 
there are certain hiatuses in our histories, such, for in- 
stance, as the lack of an account of the origin of the Demo- 
cratic Party. Historians give us the impression that it 
sprang full-grown from the head of Jefferson, that he was 
its creator. But the Democratic Party had come into 
existence in an undefined way before the great political 
genius of Jefferson laid hold of it and moulded it to his 
purposes. Jefferson was a Virginian and the Democratic 
Party as a political movement with real purposes was 
hkewise a Virginia product; the story of its rise is one of 
the most interesting chapters of Revolutionary history. 

In a brief analysis, the Revolution was the result of the 
"clash between imperial expansion and colonial develop- 
ment — two forms of progressivism — just as the Puritan 
Revolution was the outcome of the conflict of expanding 
monarchy with the growing idea of popular rights, mainly 
expressed through religion. In Virginia the colonial con- 
stitution had become well defined before the middle of 
the eighteenth century. Based on the fine old principle 
of the Englishman's inherent right of self-government, it 
had acquired certain fixed positions without much refer- 
ence to strict logic. It was really the result of a long con- 
test; the history of Virginia, hke that of the other colo- 
nies, is little more than a series of disputes with the royal 
governors, who served the colony greatly in some ways and 
in other ways were out of touch with colonial fife and 
needs. Parliament exerted a variable control over the colo- 
nies, from time to time passing taxation-without-repre- 
sentation statutes, but generally leaving the provincials 
suflBciently alone to cause itself to be looked on admir- 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 3 

ingly as the palladium of liberty. As a matter of fact, the 
causes of the Revolution were practical far more than 
theoretical. The colonies endured Parliamentary super- 
vision so long as this was not too vigorous; customs laws 
were of small account while smuggling went unchecked. 
Only when the British government attempted to enforce 
its customs acts and ventured to impose other and bur- 
densome taxes, hke the Stamp Act, did the taxation-with- 
out-representation protest appear; then the provincials, 
with all of Englishmen's gravity in asserting a paradox, 
denied the Parliamentary right of taxation. 1 If we think 
they may have been deficient in argument while right in 
principle, it should be remembered that the king's lawyers 
produced good precedents in the ship-money case in 1637. 
In a political struggle both sides always prove themselves 
right by any number of constitutional citations, but, nev- 
ertheless, the victory of one side carries with it far more 
right and happiness than the triumph of the other. 

Opposition to the British government did not begin 
with the Stamp Act in 1765. Before this time the colony 
had on many occasions successfully resisted the royal au- 
thority; indeed a legislature noted for its independence 
had existed in Virginia since 1619. In 1635 this assembly 
forcibly sent the royal governor Harvey back to England 
because it resented his efforts to enlarge his powers. Vir- 
ginia tardily and reluctantly acquiesced in the rule of 
Commonwealth and Protectorate, and, on the other hand, 
broke out in 1676 in open rebellion against its Cavalier 
governor, who sought to play the tyrant. Ten years later, 
in 1686, the House of Burgesses refused to allow the gov- 
ernor and council to lay a tax, and it did not favor the 



4 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

establishment of a post-oflSce in America by act of Par- 
liament. 

The high spirit of the Virginia assembly quickened in 
the eighteenth century with the colony's rapid growth in 
wealth, population, and culture. The governors of that 
period found themselves continually at odds with the 
House of Burgesses in attempting to secure votes of 
money; Dinwiddle even had difficulty in obtaining sup- 
plies for the French-and-Indian War. This dual govern- 
ment by royal governor and local assembly resulted in 
the attachment of certain constitutional powers to either 
party, with a neutral zone between, while outside of both 
loomed the vague, ill-defined claims of Parliament. The 
governor was selected by the king and represented him. 
Along with the ordinary executive routine, he appointed 
most of the colonial officials ; called out the militia against 
the Indians and made treaties with them ; suggested legisla- 
tion and approved or vetoed bills, but with a final reserva- 
tion to the Privy Council; sat as chief judge in the general 
court; and, finally, inducted clergymen of the established 
church into parishes — though he had not the power of 
appointing them. The governor's council, which acted in 
the threefold capacity of consulting executive body, the 
highest court and the upper chamber of the legislature, 
was appointed for Hfe by the British Privy Council on 
the governor's nomination, and was generally under his 
influence. The House of Burgesses, the representative 
branch of the assembly, consisted of two members for 
each county and single members for boroughs. It initi- 
ated money bills in the manner of the House of Commons 
and was the most important and powerful branch of the 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 5 

colonial government, successfully asserting its rights and 
privileges on many occasions in opposition to the governor 
and council. 

With the increase of the number of counties in the eight- 
eenth century and the rise of a large class of landed 
proprietors whose main public ambition took the form 
of representing fellow countrymen in Wilhamsburg, the 
House of Burgesses grew greatly in power and prestige. 
Virginia in its earlier period had been a more or less demo- 
cratic community and it always contained a sturdy small- 
farmer class, tenacious of its self-respect. Lyon G. Tyler 
has pointed out that, while in New England the poor man 
was addressed as "goodman," in Virginia he insisted on 
his right to "mister." 

But the eighteenth century saw the rise of a strong 
aristocracy, based on the possession of the comparatively 
valuable lands of the tidewater section tilled by white 
indented servants and negro slaves. Ownership of great 
tracts of cleared lands and abundance of cheap labor en- 
abled the planters, in spite of the wasteful agricultural 
system then in vogue, to raise large enough crops of to- 
bacco to leave a considerable surplus above expenses. 
The settlers had gone from England to Virginia for the 
same reason that settlers go everywhere — to make a 
living. After the first hard age of settlement, when men 
struggled to subdue nature and lived and died toiling re- 
lentlessly, there succeeded a period of relaxation, enjoy- 
ment, and growing refinement, wherein the descendants 
of successful land-patentees and tobacco-growers gave 
themselves an English education, found pleasure in society 
and sport, and took to politics as a means of gaining 



6 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

influence and distinction. And since the Virginia colonists, 
unlike those of New England, were fully in accord with 
the feelings of the majority of Enghshmen, they were 
without dissenter ideas in religion or politics. It was 
natural, therefore, that they should take as their ideal of 
imitation the Enghsh country gentleman, whose thoughts 
and habits, considering the necessary differences between 
England and Virginia, they reproduced with remarkable 
jSdehty. This planter class, generally fairly well informed 
for the times and enjoying considerable leisure, possessed 
great power among a poor and ignorant population: they 
took over almost as a right the local offices, and the ambi- 
tion of the ablest or most pushing led them to the House 
of Burgesses. 

The majority of planters did not, of course, profit by 
their opportunities. Many of them, in the fervor of their 
liking for English country life, merely wasted their means 
and leisure in sport and dissipation. Horse-racing for 
large stakes flourished in Virginia between 1730 and 1775, 
and at the beginning of the Revolution a considerable 
number of large landholders had ruined themselves by 
gambling and high Hving. Many estates were on the mar- 
ket. But the colonial system, with all its great drawbacks, 
offered a wonderful chance of development to ambitious 
and willing men. Politics was a respectable career, and 
not a business as it is so often nowadays; it invited the 
best men. The planter had a sufficient and tolerably se- 
cure income derived from his crops; he could give much 
time to reading and public affairs without private injury, 
because he usually had an overseer to superintend the 
labor of his slaves; and gradually there developed a race 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 7 

of politicians remarkable for their combination of theo- 
retical training with practical experience — men well read 
in English law and history, and, later, open to the great 
liberal tendencies of the middle eighteenth century. The^ 
liberal movement, which influenced America as well as 
western Europe, had the effect in Virginia of disturbing 
that deep-rooted idolatry of English institutions which 
had given birth to the Virginia aristocracy. A typical 
product of eighteenth-century liberalism in Virginia was 
George Mason, the broad-minded and capable thinker who 
wrote the constitution of 1776. 

The House of Burgesses was largely made up of plant- 
ers, who were Enghshmen in feeling, but who neverthe- 
less asserted the dignity and independence of the body 
in which they sat in opposition to attempts or imagined 
attempts of the British authorities to stretch their juris- 
diction. They were reinforced about the middle of the 
century by another self-willed element actually hostile 
to the imperial government, the representatives from the 
new middle and western counties. This piedmont and 
mountain section was much more democratic in feeling 
and much less cultured and wealthy than the east, even 
for the standard of those days. The western or " upland " 
members for many years were too few and inexperienced 
to do more than vote with the controlling majority led 
by skilled politicians, but they were never quite in har- 
mony with the tidewater and eventually asserted them- 
selves successfully against it. 

Several serious clashes with the royal government in 
the decade preceding the Stamp Act illustrated the grow- 
ing independence and self-consciousness of the House of 



8 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Burgesses. When Governor Dinwiddle in 1753 attempted 
on his own initiative to levy a fee of a pistole for signing 
land patents, the Burgesses protested in the memorable 
and prophetic words of Richard Bland: "The rights of 
the subject are so secured by law, that they cannot be 
deprived of the least part of their property but by their 
own consent." The governor in reply claimed that he was 
acting according to the king's instructions and strictly 
within the king's rights over vacant lands, but the House 
refused to accept his explanation: it declared that those 
who paid the pistole fee would be regarded as betrayers 
of the people, and thereby established a precedent for se- 
curing uniformity through holding offenders up to public 
obloquy later used with great effect in suppressing Tory- 
ism. The British Privy Council, when appealed to as tlie 
final authority in the fee dispute, allowed the Burgesses to 
have their way. Before the passage of the Stamp Act the 
British government at times incUned to be almost too 
conciliatory towards the colonies. 

It is probable that the House of Burgesses was mistaken 
in the pistole contention, for the title to vacant lands was 
unquestionably vested in the king, and the governor as 
the royal representative was hardly outside his rights in 
levying a fee. Still, it had not been demanded before, and 
the Virginians felt that advantage was being taken of a 
technical right to introduce a new and insidious custom 
and a possible precedent for future taxes. 

This controversy was the prelude to a much more im- 
portant dispute hinging on the king's power of interference 
with colonial legislation. The colonial constitution, as has 
been noted, recognized three powers in the state — king, 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 9 

Parliament, and local assembly. The king's power was 
mainly, though not entirely, delegated to the governor, 
who received instructions from home outlining his pol- 
icy; these instructions were regarded as law. ParUamen- 
tary authority was by general colonial consent limited to 
the regulation of commerce. Needless to say, the exten- 
sive right of regulating commerce when interpreted in 
the loose construction fashion might seem to sanction al- 
most any stretch of governmental jurisdiction, but as a 
matter of fact Parhament was not inclined to be unduly 
vexatious before 1760. Most colonial ills flowed from other 
sources. 

The assembly, which was the strictly local branch of 
government, exercised wider powers than modern law- 
making bodies — executive and judicial as well as legisla- 
tive. At first the small upper house, representing a few 
aUied families, held a dominating position, but as the col- 
ony grew in age and population the House of Burgesses 
more and more tended to become the important chamber. 
The council was Tory in feeling, while the Burgesses cher- 
ished the Whig tradition of Enghsh liberty, and its inde- 
pendent-minded leaders were bound to come into conflict 
with the British government as soon as the latter should 
attempt to stretch its prerogatives. 

The first important controversy between colony and 
home government, however, did not result from Parlia- 
mentary taxation, but from the royal authority as exer 
cised in colonial legislation. The Church of England es- 
tablishment in Virginia, the miniature state chiu-ch of the 
colony, furnished the occasion, and the conflict decided 
the long-debated question whether the control of the es- 



10 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

tablishment lay finally with the assembly or the British 
officials. In 1758 the assembly passed an act which par- 
ticularly affected the ministers of the established church 
and aroused their ire. This so-called "Twopenny Act" 
compounded debts and the salaries of ofhcials, which were 
payable in tobacco by legal regulation, in money at the 
rate of twopence a pound. The measure was possibly nec- 
essary on account of the low price of tobacco and the 
weight of taxation due to the French-and-Indian \Yar, then 
in progress, but the assembly had passed a similar law in 
1755 and seemed about to establish a rule of scaling down 
salaries w^hen tobacco was high without providing any com- 
pensation when it fell below the normal, as it frequently 
did. The state-supported clergy, who naturally objected 
to this heads-I-win-tails-you-lose system, appealed to Eng- 
land and succeeded in enlisting the services of the Bishop 
of London, the colonial diocesan. The bishop took up the 
cudgels in a letter denouncing the Virginia government. 

The final stage in the passage of a colonial law was the 
king's assent, but the assembly hastened to put the Two- 
penny Act into effect upon securing the governor's ap- 
proval, without waiting to hear from England, although 
the act altered a statute which the king had approved. 
In other words, the Virginia assembly dared to legislate 
on its own authority and in practical disregard of the king. 
The Bishop of London hinted that such action was in the 
nature of treason; it was at least not strictlj'^ constitutional. 
In answer to the bishop's letter two high-spirited Vir- 
ginians, Landon Carter and Richard Bland, sprang to the 
defense of the assembly and there followed a merry war of 
pamphlets, in which John Camm, president of William and 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 11 

Mary College, supported the side of the clergy. In this 
dispute the theory of tlie colonial constitution was first 
clearly defined by the chief writer i)articipating, Richard 
Bland. 1 

/Richard Bland, of Prince George, deserves a word of 
mention, since he more than any other man was the 
author of the Revolution in Virginia, i He was born in 1710 
and died in 1776, spanning the whole preliminary period of 
the Revolution in his mature manhood. His education was 
of peculiar value for these critical decades from 1755 to 
1775; after a preliminary course in William and Mary he 
studied history and law at the University of Edinburgh, 
and was probably the best constitutional lawyer in the 
colonies. He saw with great clearness and astuteness on 
just what grounds the legal resistance to the British policy 
might be effectively placed and most of the remonstrances 
emanating from the House of Burgesses were his work. 
In personality Bland was of that type of Virginian which 
is best illustrated by the figure of George Mason, that 
type considered characteristically Virginian, — half prac- 
tical farmer, half classical scholar and lawyer ; genial, well- 
mannered, personally somewhat untidy and careless of 
clothes. 

^Bland defended the assembly's action in setting aside a 
law approved by the king on the plea that action was some- 
times necessary before the king's will could be learned. 
*'Salus populi, suprema lex," he impudently quoted. In 
brief, the colony had to consider its own best interests, 
even at the expense of constitutional forms. But the royal 
council, to which Virginia's action was not especially 

* H. J. Eckenrode's Separation of Church and State in Virginia, 24 et seq. 



12 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

palatable, "disallowed," that is, vetoed the Twopenny 
Act, and left the clergy the remedy of suing in the courts 
for the difference between their money commutations 
and their salaries in tobacco according to the prices cur- 
rent in 1758. Several ministers took advantage of this 
decision to bring suit and some judgments were obtained. 
One of the cases came up in Hanover Court in 1763, with 
the parish minister, Maury, the plaintiff. Patrick Henry, 
then an obscure young lawyer, represented the defendants, 
who were the vestry. In the speech delivered on this oc- 
casion, Henry boldly asserted Bland's doctrine, put for- 
ward three years earlier, that the assembly had the right 
to pass necessary legislation wdthout interference from 
England. He even went so far as to declare, in terms that 
simply thrilled his audience, that the king in vetoing a 
reasonable and beneficial measure had forfeited the right 
to his subjects' obedience. This speech, which is generally 
regarded as the beginning of the Revolutionary movement 
in Virginia, actually marks the end of an agitation lasting 
for five years. Henry played Luther to Bland's Erasmus, 
carrying to their conclusion the principles which the con- 
stitutional lawyer had outlined in his pamphlet of 1760. 

As it happened, the seed fell on prepared ground. The 
once solidly Episcopalian Hanover County was now full 
of dissenters, and Presbyterians largely manned the jury, 
which brought in a nominal verdict of one penny damages. 
It proved the ruin of the clerical cause. Virginia rang 
with Henry's name and the great body of people, who had 
hitherto viewed the matter with indifference, now took 
sides against the preachers. This outburst of enthusiasm 
led in later times to an obscuring of the actual issues 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 13 

involved, and Henry was presented somewhat in the light 
of a tribune combating class privilege. In truth, however, 
the Twopenny Act had been devised by the ruling clique 
in the House of Burgesses, which would have been incon- 
veniently taxed if the ministers had been paid according 
to the letter of the law. The dissenters did play a part, 
but it was subordinate. Henry's real importance in the 
case consisted in the coujp by which he turned a quarrel of 
the House of Burgesses and the courts into a general 
political issue. It was Henry's great work, as the "Par- 
sons' Cause" first showed, to enlist the body of Virginia 
people in the Revolutionary movement, which, without 
him, would have taken a different direction. 

The clergy were defeated in the Virginia courts by the 
popular clamor raised by Henry; the British Privy Council 
also ruled against them on some technicality when appeals 
were carried to that body. Though the dispute had thus 
ended in the complete discomfiture of the clergy, the war 
of pamphlets continued for several years longer; John 
Camm, the clerical leader, exchanged fire again and again 
with Bland and Carter. Camm believed that the control 
of the Virginia estabhshment belonged properly to the 
king, not to the assembly; and this unpopular theory, 
along with the clergy's unsuccessful appeal from the Vir- 
ginia courts to the Privy Council, tended to alienate many 
persons from the state church and foster the growth of 
dissent in eastern Virginia. Presbyterians and Baptists 
now appeared in numbers in even the most conservative 
counties. 

Bland, in his later pamphlets in the Twopenny case, and 
in his "Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies," 



14 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

published in 1766, advanced beyond his first position, until 
he came to assert that all men born under an English gov- 
ernment are subject only to laws made with their own con- 
sent.^ In his Stamp Act pamphlet of 1766 he ingeniously 
outlined the distinction between the external government 
of England and the internal government of the assembly 
and between external and internal taxation, basing the 
colonial right to internal self-taxation on the common law, 
which follows the Englishman around the world, as well as 
on specific grants in royal charters. He defined, probably 
more clearly than any other colonial writer, the difference 
between the external authority of Parliament to pass acts 
for the regulation of commerce and the internal power of the 
assembly to levy any tax it might see fit, which distinction 
has survived in the American Constitution of 1787. This 
difference between "external" and "internal" government, 
rather ridiculous to Charles Townshend and not altogether 
convincing to-day, was an ingenious effort of the colonial 
mind to offer some real objection in law to the encroach- 
ments of the British ministry. From the Pistole Fee to 
1776 Bland was busy in occupying defensive positions 
against England, and these were none the less effective 
that they sometimes happened to be novel. j 

Opinion in Virginia over the "Parsons' Cause" had been 
practically unanimous except for the parsons, who natu- 
ifally viewed the constitution in another light. But in 1765, 
with the crisis brought on by the Stamp Act, party differ- 
ences began to appear for the first time. On this occasion 
the middle and western sections rose to a place of influence 
never afterwards lost. The country beyond the Blue Ridge 
^ Colonel Dismounted, 21a. 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 15 

was being rapidly settled by non-English races — Germans 
and Scotch-Irish — who had little of the Virginian rev- 
erence for Anglican institutions. The Presbyterian and 
democratic Scotch-Irish were reinforced by the piedmont 
country between the tidewater and the mountains, which 
had also been affected by dissent and democracy. Counties 
were being formed, and all that the new section needed 
was a vigorous and self-assertive leader. At length he 
appeared. 

(Before Patrick Henry's debut in the assembly in 1765, 
Virginia was ruled by a coterie of eastern members — an 
astute, far-seeing, and experienced group of politicians, of 
whom the chief was John Robinson, speaker of the House 
of Burgesses and treasurer of the colony. Robinson be- 
longed to the type which controls a conservative com- 
munity; he was well connected, rich, polished, genial, and 
possessed of fair mental powers. He ruled inter 'pares by 
virtue of his popularity and a certain force of character. 
This group led by Robinson had governed with consider- 
able efficiency and usually managed to overreach the gov- 
ernor and get their way with the home administration. 
But in 1764 they had been appalled by the declaratory act 
preceding the Stamp Act, which laid down the doctrine of 
the Parliamentary right of taxing the colonies. The House 
of Burgesses registered a dignified though emphatic protest, 
but Parliament, in disregard of colonial objections, passed 
the Stamp Act in the following year, 1765. Patrick Henry 
took his seat in the House as a member for Louisa at 
the May session of 1765, when the news of the act was 
fresh .1 

Robinson and his group had long held undisturbed pes- 



16 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

session of the House of Burgesses, but Henry, instead of 
containing himself in the presence of the silk-stockinged 
and self-important gentlemen from the tidewater, as might 
have been expected of a newcomer ignorant of the legis- 
lative "ropes," signalized his entry by assuming the cham- 
pionship of popular measures. A good opportunity stood 
at hand, but one which only a man of nerve would take. 
The ruling clique in Virginia, like all ruling cliques, could 
not entirely refrain from abusing a long lease of power. 
John Robinson partly owed his commanding place to an 
accommodatiag disposition, for it had been his habit to 
lend the public funds to friends on their personal security. 
As he was a man of large wealth for the times, the colony 
apparently did not run much risk of loss by this procedure, 
while a number of free-living, money-spending politicians 
and planters profited by the use of the treasury as a bank 
until Robinson became involved for a great amount. 

The situation finally became so serious that the speaker 
and his friends devised a plan of securing specie from 
England and lending it to planters on land security; this 
would have enabled Robinson to transfer to the treasury 
the securities he held for the public money loaned. Henry 
boldly fell athwart the scheme,^ and, according to Jeffer- 
son, defeated it, though the journal shows that the bill 
actually passed the House of Burgesses and was lost in the 
council. In the debate on the loan-office Henry gained a 
valuable ally in Richard Henry Lee, another ambitious 
politician of radical predilections, who succeeded in bring- 
ing about an investigation of the treasury. This cut-and- 
dried performance resulted in Robinson's vindication for 
1 William Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, 53. 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 17 

the time being, but on his death in 1766 a defalcation of 
more than one hundred thousand pounds came to hght. 
Nevertheless, the parties implicated looked out for them- 
selves so cleverly that they were not called to account, 
and Robinson, being dead, could not protect himself, A 
large part of his estate was sold for the benefit of the 
colony, which was not entirely reimbursed. The names of 
the borrowers never came to light, but the scandal had 
some effect on popular opinion and assisted in paving the 
way for the rise of a novus homo. 

(The loan-office was quickly crowded into the back- 
ground by weightier measures, for at this same session of 
1765 Patrick Henry took the lead in opposition to the 
Stamp Act. He precipitated a sensational crisis by sud- 
denly introducing in the House a set of resolutions which 
openly and indignantly denied the right of Parliament 
to tax the colonies. It was the best-judged move of his 
whole wonderful career, and, in effect, the beginning of the 
American Revolution. At this time the colonies had taken 
no stand on the taxation question and their future action 
was uncertain, yet, if the right of taxation was not to be 
conceded, definite and emphatic protest was imperative. 
With all deference for modern American writers who make 
out such a good case for the British government, it should 
be observed that the Stamp Act, no matter on what excel- 
lent legal grounds it might stand, was a genuine measure 
of oppression. It was a subtle tax, affecting almost every 
relation of life. If it had been tamely submitted to, any 
governmental tyranny might have been expected. The 
plea of levying a tax on America for colonial defense should 
not blind us to the obvious intention of the British gov- 



18 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

ernment also to milk the fat American cow for its own 
benefit. 

The boldness of the resolutions and the violence of 
Henry's speech alarmed the circle of eastern planters, who 
were as much opposed to the Stamp Act as the orator, but 
who preferred to carry on their opposition in the time- 
honored method of respectful petition. At a later date 
and in a period of glorification of the Revolution, it was 
claimed that Henry won a victory over the "court" or 
British faction in the House of Burgesses. As a matter of 
fact, no English party existed in Virginia at this time or 
afterwards. The nearest approach to such a party was the 
coimcLl, which was closely allied to the governor, but the 
council's influence had been steadily declining for some 
years and had practically disappeared by the Revolution. 
Certainly no English party had a place in the House of 
Burgesses, if by that term is meant a group willing to 
subordinate the colony to the will of the British govern- 
ment. The leaders acting against Henry to defeat his reso- 
lutions were Speaker Robinson, Edmund Pendleton, Pey- 
ton Randolph, Robert Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, 
and George Wythe, all of whom with the exception of 
Robinson became active revolutionists a decade later. 
The speaker, it is true, stood near the governor, Fauquier, 
and was, so to speak, in touch with the home government, 
but it is almost certain that he would have sided with his 
associates if he had been living in 1775, since he had taken 
the lead in protests and in the first committee of corre- 
spondence. Assertion of colonial rights was nothing new 
to the House of Burgesses; it had always been a singularly 
independent body. It had thwarted Governor Dinwiddle 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 19 

consistently, it had asserted itself in the "Parsons' Cause" 
and in the Pistole Fee, and in 1764 it had memorialized 
against the declaratory act preceding the Stamp Act. 
Landon Carter, George Wythe, Richard Bland, Peyton 
Randolph, and others of the so-called "court" party 
formed the committee to draw the protest. No view could 
be more mistaken than that Henry originated the spirit 
of resistance to British claims in the Virginia House of 
Burgesses; that spirit had always existed., 

But if he did not initiate the opposition, he did show 
the wisdom of immediate and emphatic action. With his 
unrivaled faculty for seizing the psychological moment, 
Henry rightly judged that the time had passed for re- 
spectful representations to the "best of kings" and that 
the hour of rough and vigorous action had arrived. The 
speech he made in defense of his resolutions was startling 
and seditious in the extreme. After a stormy debate of 
two days, May 29-30, 1765, the resolutions, somewhat 
amended, passed the House. Jefferson, loitering in the 
lobby watching the scene instead of attending his classes 
at William and Mary, describes the fat and excited Peyton 
Randolph as rushing past him swearing that he would 
have given five hundred guineas for a single vote to help 
defeat Henry. Yet this man, who so passionately resented 
the orator's bold stand on the Stamp Act, afterwards be- 
came the speaker of the Revolutionary House of Burgesses 
and of conventions, and the first president of the Conti- 
nental Congress. Robert Carter Nicholas, who a year later 
succeeded Robinson as treasurer, was an important Revo- 
lutionary leader, as was Edmund Pendleton, chairman of 
the Committee of Safety and president of the constitu- 



20 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

tion-making convention of 1776. George Wythe, another 
of Randolph's associates, played a prominent part in the 
creation of the State government and is credited by Jeffer- 
son as being the only man in Virginia sharing his own 
extreme views of the colonial constitution. Richard Bland 
had been the most effective literary representative of 
colonial rights. 

Jefferson admits that there was no difference in principle 
on the Stamp Act resolutions between the opposing parties 
in the House of Burgesses, but merely a difference on the 
question of their expediency. "They were opposed," he 
says, "by Randolph, Pendleton, Nicholas, Wythe, and all 
the old members whose influence in the House had till 
then been unbroken."^ The resistance of the tidewater 
planters was due to two things — to the leadership of a 
member outside of the old circle and, in greater part, to 
Henry's irreverent allusions to the king. The Virginian of 
that day, however much he might object to the policy of 
the British ministry, entertained a profound respect for 
the person of the sovereign; and the sentence which is 
almost all of the great speech that has come down to us — 
"Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, 
and George the Third" — was drowned in the cries of 
"Treason" rising from a deeply shocked assembly. That 
rebellious speech startled a wider audience than the cham- 
ber which heard it; it ran through the colonies and gave rise 
to the agitation ending in Parliament's repeal of the 
offending statute. 

The Virginia leaders had intended a constitutional protest 

^ Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, 60. Jefiferson's Works (Memorial edition), 
XV, 168. 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 21 

against the Stamp Act; they did not wish to commit the 
colony to a resistance that the British government might 
construe as treason. The event showed that the orator was 
right, not they, and that a bold face intimidated the min- 
istry where mildness and the spirit of conciliation would 
only have confirmed it in its course. So perhaps it is not 
to be wondered at that writers of succeeding generations, 
imbued with the prevailing democratic ideas and viewing 
the events of 1765 retrospectively, should have translated 
the conservative ring of planters and lawyers, which was 
thoroughly patriotic in temper if cautious in action, into a 
party advocating submission to England, and Henry, the 
agitator and incendiary, into an innovator forcing a decla- 
ration of colonial rights through a hostile House. We are 
further informed that the public so fully indorsed Henry 
and condemned his opponents that at the ensuing election 
for the assembly of 1766 many delegates who voted against 
the resolutions failed of reelection.^ A number of changes 
did take place in the personnel of the succeeding House of 
Burgesses, but the rejected conservatives mu^t have been 
very minor victims, since in no case was a conservative 
leader defeated. More than this, Peyton Randolph, the 
leading conservative, was elected speaker in place of John 
Robinson — a strange victory indeed for the patriots to 
have won over the "court" party. An explanation of Vir- 
ginia politics in the decade preceding the Revolution on 
the theory of a "court" or British party leads to a di- 
lemma. We are led to conclude that Patrick Henry, by 
the sheer force of genius, prevailed on the planters to stand 

^ W. W. Henry's Patrick Henry, i, 110. Journals, House of Burgesses 
(Virginia State Library), 1766-69, nc. 



22 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

up for rights to which they had been indifferent before, or 
that he forced them because of his popularity to advocate 
principles they did not believe in. They were enlightened 
by the rather unlearned Henry on the subject of constitu- 
tional law, or were driven by fear of the populace into that 
basest of opportunism, insincere revolution. The whole 
history of the House of Burgesses — proud, independent, 
and tenacious of its privileges — speaks against such a 
theory. 

In fact, it was not Henry who influenced the conserva- 
tive leaders so much as it was the conservative leaders 
who furnished him with thunder. The orator began his 
career by putting into practice in his Hanover speech the 
arguments Richard Bland had introduced to the small 
reading public in the pamphlet of 1760. Henry's eloquence 
metamorphosed the reasoning of the constitutional lawyer 
into clear common speech. Again, in 1765, he endued 
with all the fire of his passion the protests which the House 
of Burgesses had made in 1764 in rather tame phraseology. 
In neither case was there a difference of principle; in both, 
all the difference in the world in power and effect. 

The great crisis of 1765 did not, therefore, witness the 
beginning of the resistance to the British policy; that re- 
sistance had begun long before and was properly the re- 
sult of the colony's rapid development into a strong and 
populous state. None the less, Henry's appearance on the 
stage was a momentous event in American history, for it 
marked the spread of the spirit of revolt from the assembly 
to the body of the people, and the rise of the Democratic 
Party. Henry was the inspirer and first leader of that 
party, which under Jefferson grew beyond the boundaries 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 23 

of Virginia and finally triumphed in the nation at large. 
Before 1765 tendencies existed in Virginia, but no parties 
— hardly even factions. Legislative action lay in the hands 
of a group of large planters, and such opposition as existed 
did little more than express the discontent of westerners 
and the protests of dissenter preachers against the order 
of society. After 1765 there were two more or less clearly 
defined parties — the conservatives headed by the old 
leaders, and the democrats, or more properly, the pro- 
gressives, led by Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee. 
Party names did not exist, but there was true party action, 
and the opponents, though agreeing mainly in their con- 
stitutional views, differed widely as to ways and means. 
Accordingly as one faction or the other predominated, the 
Revolution in Virginia went forward rapidly or moved 
cautiously and in the hope of reconciliation with England.^ 
Patrick Henry, who overthrew the old order and brought 
in the new, is the most striking figure in Virginia history. 
In a measure he was aided by circumstances, but the chief 
factor in the coup d'etat was his own overmastering per- 
sonality. The hour and the man coincided. Henry con- 
trolled a majority in the House of Burgesses, where inar- 
ticulate opposition to the "ring" had been powerless, and 
he became a rallying figure for all the elements of dissent 
and revolution. The council, which recruited its mem- 
bership from a circle of families in the Williamsburg neigh- 
borhood, had drawn away in recent years from the House 
of Burgesses and the planter class in general. The "con- 
ciliar" families more and more tended to form a separate 
circle elevated above the other planters. Their sympa- 
thies were English, and they would have become active 



24 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Tories if the great body of planters, who viewed them with 
jealousy and distrust, had not been in the saddle. As it 
was, they became lukewarm patriots and participated in 
the Revolution in order to save themselves. 

We look back on this period with the knowledge of 
what happened. But the effect of Henry's stand against 
Parliament was not so striking as immediately to deter- 
mine the public attitude on the issue. The courts practi- 
cally negatived the Stamp Act by making various excuses 
for doing business without stamps and threatened to shut 
up shop altogether. Northampton Court even went so 
far as to declare the Stamp Act unconstitutional, the first 
instance in American history of such a declaration. The 
fate of the act depended, however, not upon court deci- 
sions, but upon popular opinion, and in the interim be- 
tween the adjournment of the assembly and the date set 
for the new law to go into effect — November 1, 1765 — 
quite a few Virginians applied for office under the tax com- 
mission in the impression that it would soon begin its work. 
No less a patriot than Richard Henry Lee had sought 
an appointment. This was an unfortunate step and one 
his friends were put to pains to explain, although Lee was 
really not so much to blame as might appear at first sight. 
The Burgesses had exhausted their resources of protest 
without impressing the British government, and the gen- 
eral belief in the summer of 1765 seems to have been that 
submission was inevitable. Benjamin Franklin thought 
so and made no effort to dissuade a kinsman who came to 
ask his advice about seeking a tax office. The crisis was 
indeed grave. If the colonists believed that acceptance of 
the Stamp Act was preferable to the risks of resistance, a 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 25 

loyalist party would have arisen in Virginia, as well as 
in other colonies, having the same interests as the British 
government. Signs are not wanting that many men in 
Virginia were willing to ally themselves with the royal 
government and prosper in its shadow. While the House 
of Burgesses had resisted every effort of the governor to 
increase his authority and had even asserted itself against 
the royal prerogative, these contests were only skirmishes 
compared to a clash with Parliament over the fundamental 
right of taxation. 

This fall of 1765, when the question of the Stamp Act 
was decided, was the critical moment in the American 
Revolution; all that followed was the direct result of the 
stand then taken. And it soon became clear that Patrick 
Henry had done a greater work than inspire a party in a 
legislative chamber; he had fired the people of all the colo- 
nies into passionate resistance to the British government. 
When the commissioner convoying the first consignment 
of stamps, a Virginian named Mercer, arrived in Williams- 
burg, the populace rose and demanded that he resign his 
office. This was on October 30, 1765, just before the Stamp 
Act became operative, and the scene was the most memo- 
rable the little Virginia capital had ever witnessed.^ An 
excited crowd gathered before the coffee-house, which 
opened on the wide thoroughfare named, with such charm- 
ing grandiloquence, "the Duke of Gloucester Street." 
The governor, accompanied by the speaker and other offi- 
cials, went thither to greet the newly arrived stamp com- 
missioner and found him on the point of being mobbed. 

^ Journals, House of Burgesses (Virginia State Library), 1761-65, 

LXIX. 



26 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

A crowd composed of the best citizens of Williamsburg 
and planters of the neighborhood loudly threatened to 
"rush in," and the speaker interposed his ample person 
before the governor to ward off possible missiles from the 
representative of the majesty of England. Mercer was in 
actual danger for a time, but he promised to give a prompt 
answer to the demand for his resignation and Fauquier's 
coolness quieted the rioters, who finally allowed the stamp 
commissioner to go off under his guardianship. Next day 
the prudent Mercer resigned. 

This outburst was no demonstration of the lower classes, 
but of the well-to-do and intelligent planters, who now 
definitely took sides against England. Owing to a simi- 
larity of feeling among the planters of eastern and southern 
Virginia, they acted unitedly, and because of their local 
power and influence they carried all classes with them into 
the Revolution. Henry had aroused the people generally; 
he had particularly stirred the younger and liberally in- 
clined country gentlemen, and they were not afraid to 
use violence to gain their way. 

The Williamsburg disturbance was followed by the or- 
ganized and effective resistance of experienced politicians. 
Richard Henry Lee, who was astute enough to know that 
he had made a mistake almost as soon as he made it and 
quickly withdrew his application for a tax position, went 
to the extreme of opposition when he saw which way the 
wind blew. His excellent talents as a conspirator showed 
to advantage, when early in the next year, in February, 
1766, he organized in his own county of Westmoreland 
the first "association," ^ that form of boycott destined to 
* Virginia Historical Register, ii, 16. 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 27 

give the British government endless trouble and to serve 
as the immediate forerminer of war in 1774. This "asso- 
ciation" bound the subscribers to import no goods from 
England until the Stamp Act had been repealed, and while 
it did not immediately prove useful because hardly needed 
under the circumstances, it remained a valuable precedent 
for future service. 

Repeal quickly followed from the emphatic protests of 
the colonies. The Stamp Act could not have been enforced 
without troops and the British ministry had no wish to 
resort to extremities. This show of weakness was fatal to 
the authority of the government. The colonies had learned 
that Parliament could be intimidated into giving way and 
never forgot the lesson: they went on to resist all further 
assertions of the English right of taxing the colonies, no 
matter on what ground. A now definitely developed pa- 
triot party in Virginia had learned, too, that uniform ac- 
tion might be secured by exerting pressure on the individ- 
ual counties, and for this reason there never was a Tory 
party in Virginia. The west was solidly patriotic because 
it was raw, democratic, and dissenter; the east was as 
solidly patriotic because the planter class, convinced that 
its welfare lay in opposition to England, overawed the con- 
siderable but widely scattered loyalist element, which was 
helpless in the face of a well-organized majority in every 
community. 

The bonfires and bell-ringings over the repeal of the 
Stamp Act might have been spared. The Enghsh adminis- 
tration, though it had abandoned the attempt to enforce 
a truly burdensome, income-producing tax, was not pre- 
pared to renounce the principle of taxation. It substituted 



28 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the Townshend Acts of 1767, which were based on the the- 
ory admitted by the colonists themselves of the Parlia- 
mentary right to regulate commerce; duties were laid on 
tea, glass, paper, and lead shipped into America. The 
struggle immediately recommenced, and the House of 
Burgesses, in April, 17C8, adopted a complaint written by 
Richard Bland that the Townshend duties amounted to 
an exercise of "internal" control and so were unconstitu- 
tional, which was an extension of the doctrine of "internal " 
power to cover the whole field of taxation and a distinct 
advance over the former position of the provincials. But 
the Americans of those days were too English to be much 
disturbed by inconsistencies; with marvelous facility they 
contrived to raise constitutional objections to every new 
assertion of authority on the part of the ministry. Indeed, 
the colonists were so thoroughly aroused by the real men- 
ace of the Stamp Act that they were determined to sub- 
mit to no new taxes of any kind. It is not for us to blame 
them. Liberty cannot be made strictly dependent on a 
series of constitutional precedents; law seldom measures 
the real issues at stake in history. However defective 
the fathers may have been in logic, — and that they were 
sometimes defective we must admit, — nevertheless, they 
stood for the principle of self-government against the world- 
old system of arbitrary rule. 

In the following year, in May, 1769, the House of Bur- 
gesses again protested against the British policy, with the 
result that Lord Botetourt, the governor, immediately 
dissolved it. The members nominally obeyed; in reality 
they merely adjourned to a private house, where they 
elected Speaker Randolph chairman and performed the first 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 29 

act of real rebellion. Borrowing Richard Henry Lee's 
scheme of three years earlier, they adopted a non-impor- 
tation agreement which specifically boycotted slaves, 
wines, and British manufactures. George Mason, who was 
not then a member of the assembly, drew this paper and 
George Washington presented it.^ Peyton Randolph, who 
had led the fight against Patrick Henry over the Stamp 
Act resolutions, acted as ringleader in this conspiracy 
against the home government. It is true that the non- 
importation agreement adopted then did not have any 
marked immediate effect, but the boycott method of re- 
sistance was carried a point further in June, 1770, when 
an "association" was formed between the Burgesses and 
the leading merchants of Virginia. At this stage of the 
taxation controversy, the economic interests of the col- 
ony, commercial as well as agricultural, stood in united 
opposition to the British policy. This association bound 
subscribers not to import from Great Britain, after Sep- 
tember 1, 1770, spirits, foodstuffs, certain manufactures, oils 
and paints, or to receive into keeping any of the prohibited 
imports after June 25, 1770. Goods imported in conform- 
ity with the association might be sold, but prices were not 
to be advanced because of restrictions laid on trade. In 
order to carry it into effect committees of five should be 
chosen in each county, with authority to publish the names 
of violators of the agreement and to examine the books 
of offending merchants. The first name signed to the as- 
sociation was that of Peyton Randolph; the next, that of 
Andrew Sprowle, of Norfolk, chairman of the trade and 
leading merchant of the colony. Then followed Robert 
1 W. W. Henry's Patrick Uenry, i, 168. 



30 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton, 
Archibald Gary, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, 
George Washington, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, 
Jr., and many others. At the same time the Virginia 
traders formed an organization at Williamsburg to further 
the association. A committee of 125 business men from 
all parts of the colony was appointed for the purpose of 
dehberating on the political situation.^ 

While planters and traders thus joined hands in support 
of colonial liberties, one order of men remained somewhat 
in sympathy with the British government. The clergy 
had been disheartened by the Privy Gouncil's abandon- 
ment of their cause in the Twopenny case. They had 
yielded to their fate without resignation, because they felt 
they were in the right, but their evident helplessness did 
not tend to encourage them to engage in other disputes 
with the assembly. Nevertheless, a few irreconcilable 
spirits, led by John Camm, president of William and Mary 
College, had the courage to defy public sentiment in an- 
other issue. Virginia was still mainly Anglican in religion, 
though dissent was rapidly growing at the expense of the 
establishment, but the Anglicans quite as much as dissent- 
ers opposed the foundation of a colonial episcopate, that 
scheme of the northern Anglican clergy. Opposition to an 
episcopate on the part of Virginia Episcopalians was polit- 
ical, of course, not ecclesiastical; they feared that an offi- 
cial like a bishop might lend a dangerous support to the 
ministerial plan to control the colonies. Under Camm's 
influence, James Horrocks, the comflaissary in Virginia, 
called a convention of ministers to debate the episcopate, 
^ Virginia Historical Register, m, 81. 



BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION 31 

but only a handful responded and their interest was obvi- 
ously lukewarm. Camm's desire to strengthen the move- 
ment for a bishop therefore came to naught. He had, how- 
ever, displayed his own Tory and High Church principles 
and his action subjected the Episcopal ministers in Virginia 
to the suspicions of a part of the populace, when, as a 
matter of fact, many of them were patriots and a few were 
Revolutionary leaders. This abortive attempt to draw 
the clergy into an ill-timed movement strikingly illustrated 
the unanimity of public opinion in the colony at that time; 
Anglicans joined hands with dissenters in opposing a po- 
litical scheme masquerading under the name of religion. 



CHAPTER II 

THE RADICALS 

The colonies were now drawing together for a union in 
defense of their liberties; their action was no longer local, 
but taken with reference to the common interests. When 
a special court of inquiry was established in Rhode Island 
in 1773, with power to send accused persons out of the 
colony for trial, the progressives in the Virginia House of 
Burgesses resolved to take steps to bring about a general 
Continental understanding. For the past few years the 
conservative and progressive factions had almost lost 
identity in the oneness of opposition to England, but with 
the close approach of the Revolution their differences 
again appeared. In March, 1773, diu-ing the session of the 
assembly, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas 
Lightfoot Lee, with Dabney Carr and Thomas Jefferson, 
two promising young men of the party, thinking that the 
conservative leaders were insufficiently zealous to be left 
the initiative, hit on the plan of forming intercolonial 
committees of correspondence.^ The measure easily 
passed the House of Burgesses; the committee appointed 
consisted of Speaker Randolph, Nicholas, Bland, Pendle- 
ton, Benjamin Harrison, Dudley Digges, and Archibald 
Cary, conservatives, and Richard Henry Lee, Patrick 
Henry, Jefferson, and Carr, progressives. Thus while the 
radicals succeeded in inaugurating their policy, the older 
faction controlled the committee. ' 

^ Henrj^'s Patrick Henry, i, 160. 



THE RADICALS 33 

This first intercolonial intelligence bureau, owing its 
inception to the fertile brain of Richard Henry Lee, did 
much to bring the scattered American communities into a 
harmonious policy. The colonies were kept well informed 
and gave Massachusetts prompt and effective support in 
her troubles. When the news of the Boston Port Bill 
reached Williamsburg in the midst of a session of the as- 
sembly, the progressive leaders, Henry, the Lees, and Jef- 
ferson, summoned a caucus of their followers and again 
took the bit in their teeth. "^ They fixed up a plan for a day 
of fasting on the date when the Port Bill became effective, 
and induced Robert Carter Nicholas to introduce the reso- 
lution, reasoning that his weight and position would carry 
it through. Fast days were not much in the Virginia fash- 
ion, and Henry and Jefferson in proposing to celebrate one 
showed that they were conscious imitators of the Long 
Parliamentarians. In the excitement of the hour elderly 
conservatives stood hand in hand with the younger pro- 
gressives and passed the fast resolution without opposi- 
tion. 

Dunmore, the governor, dissolved the assembly on May 
25, 1774, which was all that a shocked governor could do. 
The Burgesses, as before, gravely accepted dissolution in 
form and forthwith retired from the official state house to 
the Williamsburg tavern, where in that so-called Apollo 
room, dedicated to colonial mirth and revel, they put 
Peyton Randolph in the chair and adopted another boy- 
cott association, besides taking the fateful step of decidmg 
to propose a general congress of the colonies. Philadel- 
phia was suggested as the place and September 5, 1774, 
^ Jefferson's Works (Memorial edition), i, 19. 



34 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

as the date. The meeting also issued a call for the election 
of delegates from the counties to a convention of the col- 
ony at Williamsburg on August 1, 1774. 

In this unoflScial meeting in the tavern, where senti- 
ments might be expressed without fear of interruption, the 
differences between conservatives and progressives again 
came to the surface. The radicals, led by Henry, Mason, 
and Richard Henry Lee, with Nicholas temporarily aiding 
them, made the sweeping proposal of stopping payment of 
British debts, ceasiug both importation and exportation 
and closing the courts, measures of open rebellion. The 
conservatives, led by Paul Carrington, supported by Car- 
ter Braxton, Thomas Nelson, Jr., and Peyton Randolph, 
advocated payment of debts and continuance of exporting.^ 
As an association forbidding exporting as well as import- 
ing was adopted, victory lay with the progressives, though 
debt-collecting was not prohibited. 

The colony responded to the association and the call for 
a meeting by electing delegates to the August Convention 
(who were for the most part members of the House of Bur- 
gesses) and appointing local committees to enforce the 
boycott. The first of these committees, so far as is known, 
were formed in the Virginia towns in May and June, 1774.^ 
Dunmore (afterwards Shenandoah) County also elected a 
committee on June 16, 1774, and Fairfax on June 18, at a 
meeting over which George Washington presided. Other 
counties followed, but in many of them the meetings did 
not elect committees, but remained content with approv- 
ing the non-intercourse association and selecting delegates 
to the convention. 

* Magazine of History (1906), 3, 153. ^ American Archives, i, 417. 



THE RADICALS 35 

I^This August Convention, patriotically perspiring in the 
midsummer heat, adopted a more extreme association, 
which bound subscribers not to import British manufac- 
tures and products and slaves after November 1, 1774, 
and to cease exporting tobacco after August 10, 1775, if 
England did not meantime come to terms. Furthermore, 
merchants were required to sign the association on pain 
of boycott, and subscribers, violating the association and 
detected by county committees, were to be publicly 
branded as "inimical" to America. This sweeping em- 
bargo shows all the way through the hand of Richard 
Bland, who earlier in the summer, at the meeting in his own 
county of Prince George, had outlined a non-intercourse 
scheme in almost the words used by the August Conven- 
tion.^ 

The August meeting of 1774 marks the actual beginning 
of the Revolution in Virginia. The members of the House 
of Burgesses, under the moderatorship of Peyton Ran- 
dolph, quietly ignored the governor and proceeded to put 
into effect as a popular convention what they would other- 
wise have done as a legal assembly. Acting as direct rep- 
resentatives of the people, the convention, besides fram- 
ing the association, elected Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, 
and Benjamin Harrison, conservatives, and Washington, 
Henry, Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee, progressives, 
as delegates to the Continental Congress. 

At the assembling of the Congress in September, 1774, 
the strong Virginia delegation made a deep impression, 
and Peyton Randolph, that portly gentleman whose des- 
tiny it was to head so many bodies, legal and treasonable, 
* American Archives, i, 490. 



36 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

was elected president. The Virginia progressives led the 
Congress in proposing bold measures; indeed, ratrick 
Henry, in his fire-brand fashion, declared that govern- 
ment in America was dissolved, and that the colonies, 
being reduced to a state of nature, were (according to the 
doctrine of Rousseau) free to enter into a new system of 
political contract.^ Richard Henry Lee, father of boy- 
cotts, advanced non-intercourse as the needed panacea 
to cure the inflamed British public mind, and Congress 
adopted a stringent Continental Association forbidding 
the importation of British goods and the exportation of 
American products to British territories after certain 
dates. County and town committees were to carry the 
association into effect and impose on offenders the pen- 
alty of being published in the newspapers as "enemies of 
America," the "undesirable citizens" of that place and 
period. 

Congress, in passing such a resolution and the colonies 
in undertaking to enforce it, assumed a power to which 
they had no legal claim whatever. The Continental Con- 
gress, which represented the people of the colonies rather 
than governments, was a frankly revolutionary body, and 
the Association was economic war preceding bloodshed. 
The great boycott adopted by Congress was almost the same 
in detail as that drawn up by the AugTist Convention in 
Virginia, and was shrewdly, one might almost say, cyni- 
cally, calculated to intimidate the imperial government by 
striking at the EngUshman's proverbially sensitive pocket 
nerve. 

This lengthy and tedious document bound the colonies 
^ John Adams's Life and Work, ii, 360. 



THE RADICALS 87 

to refrain from imi)orlin^' IJritlsh ^oods after Dcccni])or 1, 
1774, — unless I'liarauli liaci in the mean time relented, — 
and to cease exporting products after September 10, 1775. 
American manufactures were to be encouraged in every 
way known to an age }>efore the Ijirth of "infant indus- 
tries" and paternal g<)vernm(;nt. Goods brought in be- 
twe(!n December 1, 1774, and February 1, 1775, should l)e 
reshipi)ed or d(;liver(Ml to local commitLces for disposal and 
invoices brought in after February 1, 1775, must be re- 
turned unoi)ened. To enforce these laws, styled (with 
unconscious irony) "recommendations," Congress directed 
the appointment of committees in each town and county 
with inquisitorial and j)unitive powers. Tlie punishment 
prescribed — i>ublication of offenders in the newspapers 
— was mucli more serious than it sounds, because in the 
excited condition of j)u})lic opinion it meant nothing less 
than a mild form of outlawry. 

The Revolution })egan with the enforcement of the 
Continental Association, which was, in reality, rebellion. 
At this time the people of the colonies were overwhelm- 
ingly in favor of resistance; the Tory element was small. 
It was only when the failure of the commercial war be- 
came apparent and real war began that a genuinely loyal- 
ist party arose in the colonies; then the importance of the 
issue, dwarfing in the eyes of the colonists many griev- 
ances, brought over to the British side the merchant class, 
which found itself in <ianger of being ruined by the war, 
and also in some colonies a i)art of the planter interest. (In 
Virginia, almost alone among the colonies, the planter 
classes were so imited in sentiment and so all-powerful 
politically and socially that a Tory party had no chance 



S8 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

of development, although there, as elsewhere, the rudi- 
ments of such a party existed, and might have grown under 
less adverse conditions. 

The Continental Association was carried out in \'ir- 
ginia rigidly and with great effect owing to that strong 
local feeling which unified sentiment to a degree unknown 
to modern communities. Each Virginia county was a lit tie 
world of its own, somewhat narrow and self -centered, but 
with a variety of social strata and at least a few individ- 
uals of education and public experience. A small group of 
prominent men, usually connected by family ties, organ- 
ized the opinion of each community. It is true that demo- 
cratic feeling was by no means absent, even in the oldest 
and most conservative coimties, but leaders customarily 
obtained their position through wealth and social standing, 
although the mmierous rivalries that existed made ability 
necessary as well. The representative from eastern Vir- 
ginia in the Revolutionary period usually was a capable 
and patriotic man — no mere well-to-do landowner. 

The greater activity of the enlightened classes in east- 
ern Virginia was largely due to the fact that the Revolu- 
tion in the South was not of economic origin. This state- 
ment may seem heretical in the eyes of modern history 
students, accustomed to find one explanation for every 
phenomenon of human nature: nevertheless, the evidence 
points irresistibly to such a conclusion. Only with tliffi- 
culty and great straining can economic causes for the Revo- 
lution in Virginia be adduced, and when examined they 
do not appear convincing. The fact that the movement 
began in Virginia with the adoption of measures designed 
to put economic pressure on England might ai)pcar to give 



THE RADICALS 89 

weight to such a theory, but the truth is that these 
weapons were resorted to for purely i)o]iLiciil purposes and 
to obviate the necessity of armed conflict. The Revolu- 
tion in New England was primarily economic and the 
lower classes led it: the revenue policy of the British gov- 
ernment threatened lo(.al industries. Itut aj)art from the 
Stamj) Act, which would have j)r()vcd })urdensome alike 
to all the colonics, the colonial policy of the ministry was 
not oi)i)ressive to Virginia. Nor did the Navigation Acts 
interfere greatly with the welfare of the colony, which 
found as good markets in England as there were elsewhere 
and which had grown greatly in the eighteenth century. 
And it is difhcult to bcli(!ve that the king's plan to form 
new colonics west of the AUcghanics forced the land-hun- 
gry Virginians, as has })een asserted, to go into the Revo- 
lutionary movement: land irj the wilderness at that time 
was too cheap to fight about. ) The real economist, seeking 
the most plausi])le motive, would i)ronounce the Revolu- 
tion in Virginia another ('atalinarian consj)iracy to obtain 
relief for a de])t-})urdencd comnnmity by declaring tabula 
rasa. The Virginia planters were indeed heavily in de})t 
to English merchants, just as the Southern j)lanters of 
18C0 were largely a debtor class — though this fact is not 
used to explain secession. Furthermore, Washington, 
Mason, and many other fervent i)atriots were not among 
the del)tors, nor were the westerners who so ardently sup- 
ported the revolt. 

In truth, the Revoluti(m in Virginia was almost en- 
tirely j)olitical in origin. It was the effort of a community 
singularly tenacious of its rights and jealous of the broad- 
ening shadow of the British Em[>ire across the world to 



40 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

secure certain positions for its owti safety; it was the deter- 
tnination of a proud, easy-going, liberty-loving commu- 
nity, conscious of its importance in America and of its small 
importance in English eyes, to maintain its old independ- 
ence and increase it. Chafing even during the French- 
and-Indian War at any exertion of royal authority, the 
Virginians were not prepared to admit the Parliamentary 
claims put forth in 176-i. Patrick Henry had appealed 
to this colonial jealousy and sense of difference, this vague 
and subconscious feeling of nationalism, in 1765, and the 
feeling once aroused never died out. The people of ^'i^- 
ginia beheved that the home government had determined 
in the Stamp Act to bring them to " chains and slavery," 
and thought that acquiescence in any tax whatever would 
mean the concession of a principle which would end in 
colonial exploitation for the benefit of England. Accus- 
tomed to self-government and to a freedom we cannot 
understand to-day, the planters were prepared to take the 
risks of resistance rather than to submit to any curtailment 
of their rights or any check to their development. They 
began the war reluctantly and without thought of separa- 
tion from England, but to secure their former freedom; 
separation was a measure reluctantly adopted only when 
it became apparent that it was inevitable. And indeed, 
in the closing weeks of 1774), when the Virginians began 
their active resistance, they had no great expectation of 
going to war at all. It should not be overlooked that the 
Continental Association, while an active war measure, 
was intended to secure a peaceful settlement of the diffi- 
culties between colonies and ministry. The Association 
was an attempt to bulldoze Britain into another such con- 



THE RADICALS 41 

cession as followed the Stamp Act agitation, the provin- 
cials judf^iiiK tliat if they could make tlicir disjjlcasurc 
expensive enough to British commercial interests they 
would gain their point. The plan succeeded so far that it 
brought the British traders to clamor for an understand- 
ing with the colonics, but it failed to affect the government, 
which this time stood firm. War ensued and was to some 
extent the result of a mutual miscalculation. The Asso- 
ciation, intended really as a peace j)olicy, was a conserva- 
tive much more than a progressive scheme. Its leading 
advocate was not Henry or Jefferson, but Bland, whose 
outline Congress adopted. The bolder minds among the 
progressives seem to have understood that war was inevi- 
table; and l'atri(;k Ilcnry was ready for it early in 1775, be- 
fore the first shot had been fired at Lexington and while the 
conservatives were still sanguine of a peaceful settlement. 
But Henry was the most far-sighted man of his generation. 
With prompt enthusiasm the conservatives proceeded 
to obey the recommendations of the Continental Associa- 
tion, forming committees through all eastern Virginia. 
Like the August Convention, the committees had no legal 
existence : nevertheless, the convention had wielded more 
than the powers of the House of Burgesses, because un- 
trammeled by hostile governor and council, and the com- 
mittees also exerted very great actual authority. The old 
constitution quietly expired in the least violent of rev- 
olutions. This lack of jar was due to the fact that the 
class in control of affairs wrought the change; no social 
upheaval attended the overthrow of British sovereignty. 
Members of the House of liurgesses simply became dele- 
gates to the Virginia Convention of 1774, which inaugu- 



4S THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

rated the Revolution; and in the same way, justices, ves- 
trymen, and other prominent persons formed the new 
county committees. Thus the old government was elimi- 
nated from Virginia, while all the time the governor sat 
in his residence at Williamsburg, " the Palace," imagining 
that everything would come right again. 

At first, indeed, the Revolutionary movement followed 
time-honored precedents. On court-days in November 
and December, 1774, the farmers of eastern Virginia met 
as usual and, crowded on the court-house green, heard the 
orators they had always listened to hold forth on the ini- 
quities of the British ministry and the endangered liberties 
of America. As might have been expected, they ended by 
appointing these same leading citizens as local committee- 
men to secure the "observation of the Association." It 
was the local gentry, not demagogues, who fanned the 
flame of revolution in the tidewater.; It was they, as we are 
told, who turned balls and parties into patriotic festivi- 
ties, putting heads together over tables, after the imme- 
morial custom of revolutionists, and drunkenly roaring out 
liberty songs. ^ A critical and unfriendly observer at a 
mass meeting to hang Lord North in effigy \^Tote that the 
great body of the crowd present remained looking quietly 
on at the scene, while a few cheering and swearing gentle- 
men supplied all the enthusiasm. ^ That violent leader, 
Archibald Gary, put up a large pole at Williamsburg deco- 
rated with a bag of feathers and bucket of tar as a little 
hint to any who might be found wanting in patriotism or 
discretion.' 

^ Fithian's Journal, 96. * American Archives, i, 970. . 

» Magazine of Uistory (1906), 3, 156. 



THE RADICALS 43 

r 

The leaders of the conservative party were conspicu- 
ous in the formation of county committees. Edmund Pen- 
dleton, the chief who afterwards succeeded Peyton Ran- 
dolph, was elected chairman of the Caroline Committee 
on December 8, 1774; Paul Carrington, chairman of the 
Charlotte Committee; Archibald Cary, of the Chester- 
field Committee; Robert Carter Nicholas, of the James 
City; Joseph Jones, of the King George; Peyton Randolph, 
of the Williamsburg Committee, on which Nicholas and 
George Wythe also served; Richard Bland, of the Prince 
George; Landon Carter, of the Richmond; Benjamin 
Harrison, of the Charles City.^ The county committee 
system in the east was completely dominated by the old 
leaders, to whom is largely due its extraordinary efficiency 
as an instrument to secure uniformity of sentiment by 
means of encouragement on the one hand and repression 
on the other. 

The first local committees, modeled on the colonial 
committees of correspondence, began to be formed in the 
summer of 1774 after the appointment of the Baltimore 
Committee of Correspondence. Alexandria, on May 28, 
1774, elected a committee to correspond with the Mary- 
land metropolis, and three days later, on May 31, Dum- 
fries 2 also appointed a committee. Fredericksburg came 
next, on June 1, 1774. ^ After the May meeting of the 
assembly, when an association was adopted, the local 
committees of correspondence enlarged their activities to 
include the enforcement of the boycott, thereby antici- 
pating the committees formed in the fall at the instance 

1 William and Mary Quarlerhi, v, 101-00, and 245-55. 

* Calendar of Virginia Stale Papers, viii, 61. ^ lOid., viii, 54. 



J 



44 THE IIF.VOUITION IN VIIK^INIA 

of (\u><^n'ss. TIk^ Himifrios puhlic meeting, (in -Time (», 
1771, insh'uele«l ils (•omuiiUee of eorrespondeiice lo lake 
ii|) llie new duties; * in other plaees where eoinmillees ex- 
isted th(>y i)r(»I>;d>ly nssnined them ns a matter of eotirse. 
A mcuMiu!^ at Woodstock, in l)unn\ore County, on June IS. 
1771. eU'et(Ml ii commit lee lK)th to eorres])ond and to en- 
force the associatitin," and at some time in June a simihir 
connnittee canu" into hcini!; in N«>rt\)lk. l*'airfax, StalTord, 
antl Kre<UMick elected connnit tees in July, and other bo(hes 
were douhtless formed in other phurs about this time. 

At the end of 1771- the Continental Association im- 
pelled the forniation of ctMnmilttH\s in the eastern coun- 
ties f^enerally. Tlu' central, southern, and western coun- 
ties followed a little later, until hy the mi«hlle of I77r> 
probably <n«M-y «»nc of the sixty ♦•ounliivs had complicNl. A 
connnittee "for seeing the Association duly executed" 
existed in Westmoreland prior to Novend)er 8. 1771', for 
we tind it silting in a case on that tlate. After this, the 
next connnittee t^lccted under Continental regulations, so 
far as we know, was that of Henrico, on Novend)er 17, 
1771. llam|)lon and I'Mi/.abeth (^ity f()llowed on Novem- 
ber '?! ; Warwii-k. on NovcmluM- '..'?; .lames City and Ches- 
lerlield, on November 'J.'); Kiclnnot\d (\>unty, on I>ecem- 
ber r>. This l.-ist ci^mmittet* was tin* second appointed for 
the <'ounty. Then in rapid succession came Trincess .\nne. 
FiSsex, (\iroline, I'rince William. King and (^ueen, North- 
anii>Ion. Charles City, Orange, .\ccon\ac. King George. 
lsl(> of Wight, and W'illiamsburg. all appointed in Deeem- 
bcr. 177 1.. Many other lounties selected their bodies early 
in 177.'). 

* /Imrncdfi Airliii^s. i. .SHS. » //ii(/,. i. -117. 



THE RADICALS 45 

111 Iho first luonlhs of nolivily the town niul o>in\ty 
oomiiulloos workoii as iiidopomltMit t>rg;ini/,alit>iis. uitlioul 
ivlVroiu'c to any central aulhorily. Tlioy onforetMl the iioii- 
iniporlation ami oxj)orlalion tlirections of the AsstH-ialioii, 
nuMcilossly ro[)rossotl ant i-i)al riot ic opinion, tMu-onra^nl 
Uovolutionary sontimonl, anil pr(>i)arr(l llic toiony for 
arnieci resistance to Kn^lantl. A surprisin<;ly small unionnt 
of mob violence accompanied the repressive measuivs. A 
crowd from Willianishnrjj;, in May, 177 l, boarded ;i ship 
containing lea, destroyed the j)rohibiled freif:;ht, and at- 
templetl ti> bnrn the vessel bnl withont snecess. In gen- 
eral, the local nuichines run ttu) smoothly to need violence. 
The courts had put up shutters and the usual comity ad- 
ministration was comi)letely suspended, but justices and 
other local t)(ricials, under the title of committeemen, con- 
tiimed to exercise their powers, greatly enlarged; they 
assumcil an inquisitorial authority over the life of the 
connnunity. As a loyalist sadly lanuMiled: " I'very thing 
is managed by connnittee, setting and pricing goods, im- 
printing books, forcing some to sign scandalous <'onces- 
sions and by such bullying conduct they exi)ect to bring 
Covernment to their own terms." ' 

History was rapidly made in the s])ring of 1775. The 
House of Htu'gesses, acting again as a convenlion, without 
governor or council, met in TNlarch, 177r), in the village of 
Kichmontl, where it could deliberate with more fr(>edoni 
than in Williamsburg under the governor's shadow. The 
tension in IJoston, almost at breaking-point, ukuIc the 
meeting of even more than ordinary importance, since, 
in view of the evident failure of the Continental Associa- 
1 Mayitzine of History (ll)O(i), 3. 167. 



46 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

tion to coerce the British ministry, war had passed from 
the region of possibiUty to that of immediate probability. 

The strong men of the colony mustered in force. They 
were flushed with excitement and conscious of great im- 
pending events, and they broke out into a violent party 
disagreement as to the course to pursue. The conserva- 
tives, despite the fruitlessness of their commercial policy, 
still hoped for an understanding with England; the pro- 
gressives were prepared for immediate war and revolution. 

The struggle in the convention was precipitated over a 
pacificatory declaration "that it is the most ardent wish 
of this colony (and they are persuaded of the whole conti- 
nent of North America) to see a speedy return of those 
halcyon days, when we lived a free and happy people." * 
Immediately after the adoption of this useless, if pious, 
prayer, Patrick Henry rose to move that the colony be 
at once put in a state of defense. This bold challenge was 
accepted by the conservative leaders. Bland, Pendleton, 
Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, and Willis Riddick, who 
feared lest the sympathy of the Whig Party in England 
and Parliament, upon which the conservatives now hung 
their hopes, might be alienated by the threat of force. 
They still dreamed that the manufacturing interests of 
England would succeed in moving the government and 
averting war, much as the Confederates fondled the delu- 
sion that the stoppage of the cotton supply would force 
Europe to intervene in the war between North and South. 
Furthermore, they pointed out that the colony was in no 
condition to go to war with the first military and naval 
power in the world. Henry answered them in the most 
1 William Wirt's Lije of Patrick Henry, 116. 



THE RADICALS 47 

famous of his speeches. Scouting the idea of a peaceful 
accommodation, the great agitator pleaded for military 
preparation and ended his appeal with that world-thrilling 
sentence: "Give me liberty or give me death." ^ It was a 
speech that stirred the patriot party in all the colonies, and, 
naturally, excited the disgust of Tories, who wrote home 
that the orator had denounced "the king as a tyrant, a 
fool and puppet and Englishmen and Scots as a set of 
wretches sunk in luxury who were unable to look the brave 
Americans in the face." ^ 

Henry's arming resolutions, which were supported by 
Washington, Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee, and 
aided by all his own matchless eloquence, barely passed 
the convention by a vote of 65 to 60,' showing the strength 
of the conservative opposition. The committee appointed 
to prepare a plan of defense was, however, predominantly 
progressive. Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George 
Washington, Andrew Lewis, Wilham Christian, Thomas 
Jefferson, and Isaac Zane were of this faction, while the 
conservatives were represented by Robert Carter Nicholas, 
Harrison, Pendleton, and Riddick.^ The personnel of the 
committee, largely agitators and western fighting men, 
appeared to guarantee vigorous military action, but party 
strife prevented it.^ It seems apparent that the raising of 
a military force was only the first part of Henry's plan, 
which, we are informed, intended nothing less than com- 
plete revolution and the assumption of government by 

^ William Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, 120-23. 

* Magazine of History (1906), 3, 158. 

* Ibid., 3, 158; not exactly reported. 
< Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, 124. 

* Magazine of History (1906), 3, 155. 



48 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the convention, including the appointment of magistrates 
under new commissions and the levying of taxes. His bold 
and direct mind saw little wisdom in the efforts of con- 
servatives to maintain a show of respect for the royal rep- 
resentative at Williamsburg while preparing at Richmond 
for open rebellion. But the conservatives, in their loyalty 
to the constitution and their shrinking from war with Eng- 
land, preferred to be inconsistent rather than revolution- 
ary : although they sat in a convention without legal author- 
ity, considering war measures against England, they were 
nevertheless ready to come together again at the gover- 
nor's call as the legitimate assembly of the colony. Henry 
sought to rend asunder this benighted constitutionalism, 
which had no meaning now, and gain the advantages that 
come from taking a firm initiative, but the conservatives, 
who clung instinctively to the connection with the crown, 
succeeded in putting off the catastrophe a httle longer. 
Nicholas, Harrison, Bland, and Riddick worked together 
strenuously to this end. 

As a result of the united and determined conservative 
opposition,^ the March Convention bore little fruit and the 
Revolution did not formally begin in Virginia before the 
battle of Lexington, as would have been the case if Pat- 
rick Henry had had his way. The history of the Revolu- 
tion in Virginia throughout 1775 is a repetition of the clash 
in the March Convention, the conservatives time and 
again postponing decisive action in their efforts to prevent 
war and secure a peaceful settlement according to their 
ideas of the colonial constitution. This anomalous condi- 
tion of a country in actual but unrecognized rebellion con- 
1 Magazine of History (1906), 3, 158. 



THE RADICALS 49 

tinued until late in the summer. The courts were closed, 
militia companies drilled at every court-house, and the 
county committees busied themselves in hunting out and 
suppressing British sentiment wherever it appeared : Dun- 
more, however, remained undisturbed in his "Palace" 
at Williamsburg. Seldom has history presented a more 
illogical picture. 

Yet, in spite of the conservative fear and distrust of 
Henry's radicalism, the two wings of the patriot party 
worked together in some respects. The progressive wing, 
led by Henry, Jefferson, Mason, and the Lees, made con- 
cessions to the older, English-loving faction, which gen- 
uinely dreaded revolution though hostile to the British 
policy. The conservatives, in turn, cooperated with the 
radicals in necessary undertakings, such as the crushing of 
the individual Tories scattered through the colony. These, 
if left to themselves, might have combined to form a party: 
obedience to the Continental Association was demanded 
and dissent was repressed effectively. The chief conces- 
sion made by the progressives to the conservatives was 
non-interference with Dunmore, whom the older men 
continued to regard as the legitimate head of the state. 
Undisturbed as he was, the one policy left Dunmore was 
masterly inactivity : he had no military force at his disposal 
and such authority as he still possessed was by grace alone. 

Dunmore, however, mistaking the forbearance of the 
Virginians for timidity, determined to overawe them by a 
sudden and audacious stroke. On the night of April 20, 
1775, a squad of marines from the king's ship Magdalen, 
lying in the James River near by, carried a quantity of 
powder from the colony powder-house in Williamsburg on 



50 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

board the ship. The next morning, when the townsfolk 
learned that their magazine had been rifled, they appeared 
in the streets in arms, only to quiet down finally under 
the representation of the town officials that the powder 
would be restored. The council respectfully requested the 
governor to return the colony's property and were met 
with the transparent excuse that it had been removed for 
fear of a slave rising and would be sent back when needed. 
Peyton Randolph and Robert Carter Nicholas played a 
great part in making this evasion palatable to the Williams- 
burgers, who, respecters of persons and dignitaries as they 
were, could become riotous on occasions. A wild rumor sent 
them to arms a second time a day or two later, but their 
excitement at last subsided and the incident seemed closed. 
The inland people were not so easily calmed as the 
tractable population of the capital. The news of the pow- 
der seizure spread through the colony and created great 
excitement. Some hundreds of volunteers from northern 
and western Virginia met at Fredericksburg, ready to 
descend on Dunmore, while at other muster-places the 
militia gathered in considerable numbers.^ But Peyton 
Randolph, working to quiet the agitation, wrote around 
in the name of the town corporation that the governor had 
pledged himself to return the powder and advised strongly 
against violence. The musters, therefore, melted quickly 
away and left the victory seemingly with Dunmore. His 
lordship, nevertheless, had been sufiiciently alarmed by 
the stir to issue, on May 3, 1775, a proclamation repeating 
the slave-insurrection bugaboo. As might have been ex- 

^ C. R. Lingley's Transition in Virginia from Colony to Commonwealth, 
67. An excellent study of this period. 



THE RADICALS 51 

pected, the county committees which then ruled Virginia 
received with contempt this bungling essay in fiction; 
still, they were for the most part conservative enough in 
temper to accept the explanations of the patriot leaders 
at Williamsburg as satisfactory. 

At this juncture, however, the agitator who appeared 
at every crisis, who had stirred the colony in the "Par- 
sons' Cause" in 1763 and again in the Stamp Act debate 
in 1765, seized the Heaven-born opportunity for vigorous 
action. Rousing the Hanover Committee by his fiery 
words, Patrick Henry marched on Williamsburg at the 
head of the county volunteer company. The act was less 
rash than it seemed : not only could Henry count on a large 
and devoted following throughout Virginia, but the move- 
ment was so well timed that it completely unnerved Dun- 
more, who had no troops behind him. When the orator, 
with the ever-growing mob of armed men that hastened 
to him from all sides, drew near Williamsburg, the governor 
sent him a message apparently offering payment for the 
powder. In any event, Henry received from a royal officer 
a sum of money for the powder and thereupon turned his 
men homeward. He professed satisfaction with the result, 
but, in reality, he had been checkmated in the greatest ef- 
fort of his career. There can be little doubt that he marched 
on Williamsburg prepared to take advantage of Dun- 
more's folly by seizing the government and inaugurating 
the Revolution without further delay; but the conserva- 
tive leaders in Williamsburg, who strove almost frantically 
to stave off the crisis,^ brought such strong pressure to 
bear on him that he abandoned his plan in the interests of 
1 Magazine of History (1906), 3, 159. 



52 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

harmony. The governor continued to hold his place after 
the gunpowder incident solely because of the rather ill- 
judged procrastination of the conservatives and their ex- 
cessive tenderness for constituted authority. 

Dunmore now gave another and supreme illustration 
of his weak and unstable character, which oscillated be- 
tween timidity and temerity according as pressure was 
applied or withdrawn. England has been fortunate for 
the most part in her choice of official representatives in 
her colonies and vassal nations; they have usually been 
men of ability, and occasionally of insight and feeling. 
(Was there ever an administrator who surpassed Raffles 
of Java?) But the British government had not acted with 
its accustomed discrimination in selecting the Scots Earl 
of Dunmore as governor of Virginia at a critical time like 
1771. He succeeded two able and popular men, Fauquier 
and Botetourt, who had done everything possible to recon- 
cile colony with mother country. Dunmore, also, in his 
rather flaunting way, had courted popularity with some 
degree of success, although his plan to prevent revolu- 
tionary activity by proroguing the assembly, whenever 
the House of Burgesses became seditious, had wearied the 
Virginians without interfering with their programme. 

The governor was mad enough, as soon as Henry's back 
was turned and his force dispersed, to issue a procla- 
mation branding him an outlaw and warning the people 
against aiding and abetting him. As Henry was the idol 
of the hour — the leader of the colony as no other Vir- 
ginian had ever been — and as Dunmore had no military 
force whatever, such a fiery pronunciamento, coming on 
the heels of an abject backdown, was worse than foolish. 



THE RADICALS 53 

Whatever his reason, Henry calmly ignored the proclama- 
tion, which would have served him as an excellent pre- 
text for attacking Dunmore in earnest. Consideration 
for the conservatives probably kept him from acting, 
but he may have decided that it was higher wisdom to 
allow the inevitable to occur without his personal in- 
terference. 

Owing to this reluctance of the conservatives to pre- 
cipitate action, their hopeless crying of peace when there 
was no peace, the curious situation in Virginia continued 
for a month longer. Dunmore even called a meeting of 
the assembly for June 1, 1775, to secure the reopening of 
the courts and consideration of Lord North's compromise 
proposals. It is likely that he at last realized that his pol- 
icy of embarrassing the colony by refusing to convene the 
legislature had merely resulted in his own practical elimi- 
nation from affairs. The Revolutionary movement, far 
from halting in the vacation of the assembly, had in fact 
progressed faster, because unhampered. The Burgesses 
were too experienced a breed of politicians to be check- 
mated by so obvious a ruse as prorogation. Durmiore was 
finally able to perceive this. 

The Virginians of that day were either Englishmen and 
lacking in a sense of humor, or they had become Ameri- 
cans and had acquired it in a high degree. For, with war 
in full blast in the North and the colony in arms, the 
Revolutionary Convention of March, 1775, including 
Henry, actually met at the governor's order on June 1, 
1775, as the House of Burgesses. The House as the con- 
stitutional lower body of the assembly gravely consid- 
ered the acts it had performed in its other role of rebellious 



54 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

convention and duly pronounced them good.^ It did not, 
however, gratify the governor by reopening the courts. 
The schedule of fees to be charged in judicial proceedings 
had to be regularly reenacted; and in the absence of such 
authority no fees could be charged or business transacted ^ 
— an ingenious constitutional device to secure the sub- 
serviency of the courts to the House of Burgesses. The 
Burgesses rejected North's conciliatory offer to accept 
the assurances of the colonies that they would contribute 
to the defense of the British Empire; the Revolution had 
gone too far to be stopped by anything short of a complete 
renunciation of the right of taxation by Parliament. Even 
the conservatives, anxious as they were to preserve peace, 
demanded this much. 

Feeling against Dunmore rose to such a height in the 
House of Burgesses that, according to report, Richard 
Bland, the erstwhile conservative, actually suggested 
hanging him and was warmly supported in this extraordi- 
nary proposal. 3 What was more alarming than these out- 
bursts, a force of riflemen, known as " shirtmen " from their 
long hunting-frocks, so different from the conventional 
European garb of the tidewater, had reached Williams- 
burg from the piedmont counties, and Dunmore fled with 
his family on board the Fowey at Yorktown. Still attempt- 
ing to play the governor from his floating headquarters, 
he sent demands to the assembly from time to time. On 
June 21, 1775, the disgruntled Burgesses, who were almost 
morbidly anxious to preserve constitutional forms with- 
out regard to circumstances, forwarded to the governor a 

^ Lingley's Transition in Virginia from Colon;/ to Commonwcallh, 71. 
2 Ibid., 70. * Magazine of History (190G), 3, 100. 



THE RADICALS 55 

last protest against his absenteeism and concluded their 
work without him,^ adjourning to meet again on October 
21, 1775. The constitutional figment was now worn thread- 
bare; since the acts passed by the assembly were not legal 
without Dunmore's approval, it was evident that Virginia, 
in spite of her conservatism, had come to the point of 
undisguised revolution. The colonial assembly never met 
again. On October 21, and at two subsequent dates, there 
came together a handful of Burgesses, too few to make a 
quorum.'^ The House of Burgesses, in its role of conven- 
tion, assumed both the executive and legislative functions. 
Yet so strong was the force of legal practice and consti- 
tutional principles in Virginia, so deep-rooted the attach- 
ment of the older conservatives to England, that one more 
effort was made to legalize the proceedings of the conven- 
tion. As lute as January, 1776, when Dunmore was a 
defeated fugitive and the Committee of Safety ruled in his 
stead, the governor wrote Richard Corbin, president of 
the council, — himself somewhat of a Tory, — express- 
ing a wish to act as mediator between the colony and Eng- 
land.' Corbin sent this letter to the Committee of Safety, 
which declined to consider Dunmore's offer, but referred 
it to the next meeting of the House of Burgesses. Corbin 
then went to Williamsburg in February, 177C, to consult 
the Committee of Safety, and, with its consent, visited 
Dunmore on board his shij) for the purpose of inducing him 
to commission the president of the convention as acting 
governor for the adjourned meeting of the assembly. Dun- 
more refused to grant the commission, thus frustrating 

* I/in^loy's Transition, etc., 74. "^ Ibid., 75. 

^ Virginia Gazette (Alexander rurdie), March 1, 1770. 



^ 



56 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the last eflfort of the conservative leaders to continue the 
government under the colonial constitution. 

The convention that met on July 17, 1775, disregarded 
the fugitive governor, now become an active enemy, and 
at once proceeded to put the colony on a war-footing. It 
directed the enlistment of two regiments of troops and 
attempted to provide an efficient militia system. Further- 
more, it filled an imperative need by creating a revolu- 
tionary executive, that junta known as the Committee of 
Safety. 

In the absence of several of the most noted leaders, 
sent as delegates to Congress, Peyton Randolph, Harri- 
son, Henry, JeflFerson, Wythe, and Richard Henry Lee, 
the highest vote for committeeman was given Edmund 
Pendleton, who thereby became chairman. He, with 
Richard Bland, who declined to go to Congress, Paul Car- 
rington, Dudley Digges, Carter Braxton, John Page, and 
John Tabb, conservatives, and George Mason, Thomas 
Ludwell Lee, William Cabell, and James Mercer, pro- 
gressives, composed the Committee of Safety. The elec- 
tion was a conservative triumph, owing partly to the ab- 
sence of Richard Henry Lee and Jefferson, both of whom 
were in Philadelphia, and, even more, to the loss of Pat- 
rick Henry, who aspired to military glory as colonel of 
one of the Virginia regiments. Since Mason, the one strong 
progressive member of the committee, was absent from 
most of its meetings, direction of affairs fell into the hands 
of the conservatives under the leadership of Edmund 
Pendleton, the chairman. This transfer of power from pro- 
gressives to conservatives, with some of the aspects of a 
coup d'etat, led to the postponement of hostilities with 



THE RADICALS 57 

Dunmore for some months. Indeed, the year might have 
expired peacefully but for the headiness of the ex-governor, 
who left the Committee no choice but war. With the pro- 
gressive leaders out of the way, at the election of the Com- 
mittee of Safety the conservative faction succeeded in 
getting the executive power in its own hands and so de- 
ferred the final step in the breach with England; they 
doubtless hoped for some eleventh-hour victory of peace 
to satisfy colonial demands and yet leave the British Em- 
pire intact. The conservatives never realized, as Henry 
and Jefferson did, that such a dream was the one impos- 
sible thing. 



CHAPTER III 

THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 

The only phase of the Revolutionary War in Virginia 
in which the few open loyalists played any active part 
was in the struggle around Norfolk in the closing weeks 
of 1775. That any residents of the colony dared side with 
England was solely on account of Dunmore's presence at 
Norfolk with a small fleet of men-of-war and a handful of 
British regulars. His active supporters in the colony were 
confined to the mercantile class, shippers and their clerks 
and dependents — the same class that supported British 
authority in all the colonies because it saw that war with 
England meant commercial ruin. Fortunately for the 
patriots Norfolk was a small town of about six thousand 
inhabitants and the local trading interest of inconsiderable 
numbers; otherwise, Virginia would have had to contend 
with a center of disaffection like Philadelphia, a seaport 
which must inevitably have fallen into British hands on 
account of its accessibility to sea-power and inaccessibility 
to the rest of the colony. 

The royal governor, after abandoning his "Palace" at 
Williamsburg, in June, 1775, made his way to Norfolk, 
where he remained rather inactive for several months for 
lack of troops to help him to reestablish himself. The 
Revolutionary government, under the direction of the con- 
servative Committee of Safety, had no wish to disturb him 
as long as he kept reasonably quiet. Military policy dic- 
tated that Dunmore should be attacked without delay. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 59 

for he had no land force of any sort until the latter part 
of July. The progressive element would have liked well 
enough to begin hostilities, but it seems probable that the 
conservatives still hoped that England would concede 
the colonial demands and end the dispute. In this hope 
they were making their last stand for peace. 

Dunmore's headquarters were at Gosport, a village on 
the Elizabeth River above Norfolk, destined in later days 
to be the site of the United States navy yard from which 
the Merrimac ventured forth on her famous career. At 
first the governor had at hand only the sailors and marines 
of the frigates Mercury and Mars,^ but he was afterwards 
reinforced by sixty men of the Fourteenth Regiment of 
the line, and eventually by a hundred more of the same 
regiment. This was a force too small to be of importance 
in itself, but valuable as a nucleus for building up some 
sort of military organization. Owing to the reluctance of 
the Virginia Revolutionary government to take the initia- 
tive, he was allowed time to gather a small and motley 
company of recruits, mostly Scotch clerks and runaway 
negroes. With these he soon succeeded in making himself 
a good deal of a nuisance. 

The county committees along the Chesapeake are said 
to have begun the war by their rigid enforcement of 
the Continental Association, but the actual beginning 
of hostilities resulted from British activities in August, 
1775. In that month Captain Squier, of the sloop-of- 
war Otter, cruised in the Chesapeake and its tributaries, 
plundering plantations and carrying off provisions and 
slaves. He conducted this annoying warfare in ship's 
» Magazine of History (1906), 3, 160. 



60 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

tenders and confined himself chiefly to raiding for provi- 
sions in the neighborhood of Norfolk; occasionally, how- 
ever, a coasting schooner was seized and held as a prize. 

The earliest show of violence occurred on September 2, 
1775. On that date Squier, while apparently engaged in 
one of his chicken-stealing expeditions along the Bay, 
had his tender driven ashore near Hampton by a storm. 
The exasperated inhabitants took advantage of the op- 
portunity to appropriate the guns and burn the tender, 
but without offering to injure or detain the crew. Squier 
made repeated demands for the return of the stores and 
finally went to Hampton with several tenders. He at- 
tempted a landing, but a brisk fire from one of the houses 
drove him off with a loss of two killed and two wounded.^ 

This beginning of hostilities, together with Dunmore's 
threatening attitude, compelled the Revolutionary gov- 
ernment to move against Norfolk. The Committee of 
Safety gradually gathered a considerable body of militia 
at Williamsburg, consisting in large part of riflemen, who 
were expert marksmen with considerable experience in 
bush fighting and by far the most eflBcient soldiers the col- 
ony possessed. These troops, when organized into two 
regiments, formed a fairly well-trained force. 

During the summer a strange condition of affairs existed 
in Norfolk. The rigid enforcement of the non-exportation 
policy had ruined business and greatly lessened the early 
enthusiasm for the colonial cause displayed by the mer- 
chants of that place. Besides, the presence of Dunmore, 
even though he took no active measures against the pa- 
triots, made necessary a policy of loyalism or neutrality 
1 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, xrv, 133. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 61 

on the part of those who remained at home. Dunmore, 
in one way and another, during his stay at Norfolk man- 
aged to gain a considerable number of adherents in that 
region and to cause the revolutionists no little uneasiness. 

But his resources were too small to be of much use in a 
serious conflict with the provincial forces. He had about 
three hundred British regulars, some sailors, a handful of 
Scotch merchants and clerks gathered from Norfolk and 
Portsmouth, and about two hundred slaves, ignorant for 
the most part of the use of arms. However much hope 
Dunmore's natural optimism may have aroused in him, 
the Norfolk loyalists did not delude themselves as to the 
seriousness of their position. They heard with growing 
dismay the reports from Williamsburg, whither the up- 
country riflemen were flocking in numbers, and wrote 
pessimistic letters home to Scotland. 

In this preliminary period before the beginning of un- 
disguised war, Norfolk was reduced almost to a condition 
of blockade by the county committees along the Chesa- 
peake. Communication between that town and Hampton 
and Williamsburg was cut and no person might travel in 
and out of Norfolk without a pass. Suspicious characters 
were not allowed to come within thirty miles of the place ; 
newspapers were held back from it; and ships coming from 
that direction could not go up the rivers. A small trade 
of some sort continued, but many of the Norfolk people, 
alarmed by the situation and by the reported threats of 
the colonial troops at Williamsburg, moved into the coun- 
try with their families and effects.^ 

^ Andrew Sprowle's letter in Miscellaneous Papers of the Committee of 
Safety and the Convention of 1775. Virginia State Library. 



62 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

For some months Dunmore made no attempt to take 
possession of Norfolk, but contented himself with remain- 
ing on his ships in the harbor and assuming a rather over- 
awing attitude. Naturally there was some irritation. In 
spite of the town's small size it boasted a mob, which, 
unlike the merchants, was more or less patriotic in feeling. 
A loyalist named John Schau, who had made himself 
obnoxious, was roughly mishandled — apparently afford- 
ing the only instance in Virginia of violence offered to 
Tories during the early part of the Revolution. Even this 
outrage was probably due to the presence of the British, 
who frequently visited Norfolk from their ships and in- 
clined to carry things with a high hand. Early in August 
a few soldiers took possession of a store in Gosport be- 
longing to Andrew Sprowle, the leading merchant in the 
colony. Sprowle, by quietly submitting to this quartering 
on his property or by a generally lukewarm and loyalist 
attitude, awakejied the suspicions of the Norfolk borough 
committee, and he was summoned to appear before it 
and give an explanation of the use of his house by the 
British. Instead of obeying, Sprowle replied that the sol- 
diers had insisted on escorting him to the committee meet- 
ing in order to protect him from Schau's fate, but added 
that he refused the escort for fear of provoking a disturb- 
ance. As an alternative he suggested that the committee 
visit him under a pledge of safe conduct on board of one 
of the warships or at his house in Gosport. The committee 
must have believed that he had been coerced, for, in its 
reply of August 21. 1775, it approved of his behavior and 
thanked him for the information given. "In the mean 
time," it wrote, "they see the fatal necessity of your sub- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 63 

mitting to this Arbitrary & Unprecedented Act of Tyr- 
anny — a cruel situation indeed when every petty Officer 
in His Majesty's service assumes the Authority of an 
Absolute Monarch, and the private property of a peace- 
able Citizen is seized upon as Lawful prey." ^ 

Sprowle's case is a sad example of what usually hap- 
pens to prominent citizens caught between the upper and 
lower millstones of civil conflict. He had no real partisan- 
ship, merely desiring to live in peace; but it was not pos- 
sible in Norfolk for a man of his position to occupy a neu- 
tral attitude during the latter months of 1775. Sprowle 
could not bring himself to abandon his property and 
seek safety in the interior like the majority of Norfolk 
people of patriot sympathies. He stuck by his goods and 
paid for it; for Dunmore later came ashore and quartered 
his retinue on him, and, when the approach of the Vir- 
ginia troops forced an evacuation, ended by carrying the 
merchant with his family aboard the British fleet. There 
he was treated with inhumanity, till, worn out by his mis- 
fortunes and sufferings, he died on ship some months later. 
By a former marriage Sprowle's wife had a son, John Hun- 
ter, who had accepted a commission in the British army 
and was then a prisoner in American hands. On the pre- 
tense of letting her see her son, but really to get rid of 
her, the governor allowed the widow to visit Norfolk. The 
Committee of Safety, considering her a dangerous per- 
son, ordered her back to Dunmore, and he in turn refused 
to receive her. The poor shuttlecock at length escaped 
from an impossible situation by sailing for England. ^ 

^ Miscellaneous Papers of the Committee of Safety and the Convention 
of 1776. 

* Legislative Petitions. Norfolk (B4228). Virginia State Library. 



64 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Dunmore ventured on his first act of aggression in Nor- 
folk in the latter part of September, 1775. One morning 
a boatload of grenadiers and marines landed there, sur- 
prised a printing establishment which had been issuing 
revolutionary pamphlets and manifestoes, and carried off 
both press and printers. A crowd of several hundred peo- 
ple watched the proceedings without daring to interfere. 
The militia, when called out, failed to respond in any 
numbers, and the British went back to their ship full of 
contempt for provincial valor. ^ The Williamsburg gov- 
ernment is said to have blamed the Norfolk people for 
making no fight,^ but with the frigates lying in the har- 
bor ready to open fire, the local soldiery could have done 
nothing. 

Nevertheless, the affair gave Norfolk a black mark 
among the patriots. Loyalists complained in their let- 
ters that the provincials were breathing out threatenings 
against the town and predicted that it would be destroyed 
unless help came from England. In anticipation of this 
fate, a good part of the population moved into the interior 
or sailed for the British Isles. Anthony Warwick, a Tory, 
reported that a third of the people had gone away, carry- 
ing most of their property. Deep apprehension prevailed 
among those who remained. 

After the attack on the printing-press, Dunmore went 
on to seize persons conspicuous for activity in the pa- 
triot behalf, among them John Goodrich, who had re- 
cently brought powder into the colony for the Committee 
of Safety. Goodrich, a man of rather low moral nature, 

^ Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1776 (Virginia State Library). 
* Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, xiv, 134. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 65 

was so wrought upon by Dunmore's threats or promises 
that he changed sides — most disastrously for himself. 
The governor also began to put pressure on the people of 
the Norfolk neighborhood to declare for the royal cause, 
while in retaliation the county committees blockaded the 
town more and more rigorously. A Tory, writing on 
November 10, 1775, vividly describes the difficulties cre- 
ated by the committees : — 

It is not now possible for any of our Countrymen to travel the 
Country without a pass from Committees or Commanding offi- 
cers, which none of them can procure & indeed its difficult for 
even the Natives to get permission to come here; so that we 
receive no Intelligence of what is doing in the Country except 
by water & none but the Tenders belonging to the Men of War 
are allowed to come up to this place. ... It is now certain that 
the provincials are on their march from Williamsburg for this 
place or Norfolk, it is uncertain which, tho it is generally believed 
they come with a professed Intention of destroying by fire both 
Towns . . . the whole Country are anxious to have these Towns 
destroyed as they think them places of refuge for those who are 
Inimical to what they call the Liberties of America; & true it is 
there are not so many Inhabitants now in both Towns but what 
are avowed Tories & have publicly declared themselves friends 
to Government & willing to take up arms in its defence. Peti- 
tions and addresses are daily presented to the Governor by the 
Inhabitants of Norfolk & the Country around it praying that 
they may be presented with arms to assist in the defence of them- 
selves & of Government & some of them have taken those who 
are most troublesome in their neighborhood & brought them on 
Bd the Man of War where they are detained prisoners & will 
soon be sent to Boston for their tryal.^ 

The royal governor, partly by flattering and raising the 
hopes of the loyally inclined and partly by hectoring the 

* Miscellaneous Papers, 1776-1776. 



66 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

neutral, collected a small levy of auxiliaries — possibly 
two hundred in all. In addition to these, several hundred 
runaway and kidnapped slaves were armed and uniformed; 
but time and officers were lacking to turn them into effi- 
cient troops, and we are told that the British regulars 
greatly disliked serving alongside them.^ Dunmore offered 
commissions in the service with great liberality, but found 
few takers. Among the handful who accepted was Josiah 
Philips, afterwards noted as a loyalist outlaw operating 
in this district. The governor also directed town meetings 
to be held in Norfolk from time to time for the purpose of 
arousing enthusiasm for the British cause, at one of which 
he was formally invited to take possession of Norfolk. 
John Woodside, who seconded this motion in the meet- 
ing, thereby gained the reputation of being "inimical" 
and was afterwards refused recompense for his property 
destroyed at the burning of Norfolk: the other loyalists 
who suffered by it shared the same fate.^ 

While people of importance were lured by flatteries or 
coerced by threats into espousing the British side, the 
sailors and marines worked on the lower classes along the 
shores of the Bay, endeavoring to wean them from their 
lukewarm allegiance to the province, or at least to keep 
them indifferent. The Northampton Committee com- 
plained to Congress of this practice; they declared that 
the British tenders, plying along the Eastern Shore, as- 
sured the fishermen that nobody had to fear the British 
except the committeemen and leading patriots, and that 
the men who urged them to take up arms were their 

» Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1776. 

2 Legislative Petitions. Norfolk (B4265). 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 67 

greatest enemies. These advances made some impression. 
While people of property were in the main well affected 
to the American cause, many feared to declare their sen- 
timents openly until a force arrived to assist them: ^ in 
southeastern Virginia, the lower classes for the most part 
remained indifferent or hostile to the Revolution until the 
end of the war. 

Hostilities may be said to have begun about the middle 
of November. If the initiative had devolved on the reluc- 
tant Committee of Safety, there is every reason to suppose 
that the year would have passed without fighting. Such 
a result would have been greatly to Dunmore's advantage; 
even though the provincial levies were preparing for con- 
flict and so improving with time, his own force was as yet 
too small to engage in a real struggle: he had only one 
chance and that was that a breeze might blow through the 
Capes a few transports carrying a British regiment. Until 
this happened his cue was to lie low. 

But Dunmore thought that boldness was his best policy. 
By this time he had succeeded in collecting a mixed and 
untrustworthy force of negroes, Scotch loyalists, and Nor- 
folk and Princess Anne militiamen who had absolutely 
no stomach for fighting on either side. Trusting to this 
undisciplined band and his few regulars, the governor 
ventured to make open war and thus forced the Commit- 
tee of Safety in self-defense to attack him. Unable to re- 
main inactive any longer, the Williamsburg government 
put its troops into motion along the south side of James 
River in October, 1775. About the same time two militia 
colonels, Anthony Lawson and Joseph Hutchins, gathered 
* Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, xiv, S853. 



68 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

at Kempsville that part of the Princess Anne and Norfolk 
militia that remained true to the colonial cause. Kemps- 
ville, the county seat of Princess Anne, is a village on the 
headwaters of the East Branch of the Elizabeth River, a 
few miles southeast of Norfolk. Being at the intersection 
of several roads, it was a place of some strategic impor- 
tance in a country where roads were few and swamps 
abounded. Dunmore, in turn, sallied forth from Norfolk 
on November 14, 1775, with about one hundred and fifty 
grenadiers and fifty or more loyalists and negroes, and 
marched to Great Bridge on the South Branch of the 
Elizabeth River, twelve miles due south of the town. He 
had been led to take this step by a report that a party of 
North Carolina militiamen had advanced thither for the 
purpose of supporting the Virginia troops,^ and also pos- 
sibly by a rumor of the coming of the dreaded " shirtmen." ^ 
But as neither Carolinians nor the detachment from Wil- 
liamsburg had reached Great Bridge, Dunmore turned 
east along the edge of a large forest to Kempsville, where 
he had learned the local militia were gathered in some 
force. The colonial troops, about three hundred in all, 
had taken post in the woods along the highway, and were 
prepared for resistance. When the head of the marching 
column came in sight some distance down the road, the 
militiamen fired a volley, but without effect. The regu- 
lars, returning the fire, drove their opponents from cover 
into the river near by, with a loss of several killed, several 
drowned, and fifteen or twenty prisoners, including Law- 
son and Hutchins.^ The affair was an easy triumph of 

1 Virginia Gazette, January 20, 1776. 

2 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, xiv, 387. 
» Ibid., XIV, 256. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 69 

regulars over undrilled and half-hearted fanners and fish- 
ermen, but the participants on the British side made much 
of it as an omen of future success and a specimen of Vir- 
ginia valor. The soldiers jocularly asserted that Hutchins 
had been captured because he was too drunk to run away 
with his followers. 

The night following the skirmish the grenadiers and 
negroes broke into the houses in the hamlet and insulted 
the owners, apparently without restraint by Dunmore. A 
woman who had been frightened by an armed negro ap- 
pealed to the governor for protection. "Why, madam," 
he nonchalantly replied, "this is a provoking piece of inso- 
lence, indeed, but there is no keeping these black rascals 
within bounds. It was but the other day that one of them 
undertook to personate Captain Squier, and actually ex- 
torted a sum of money from a lady in his name. But we 
must expect such things, whilst this horrid rebellion lasts.'* 
He then asked: "But, pray, madam, where is your hus- 
band all this time?" The woman replied that she did not 
know and, furthermore, could not tell when she would see 
him. "Well, madam, when you do," said Dunmore, "you 
must be sure and tell him, for me, that this is no time for a 
man like him to be out of the way. His Majesty wants his 
service, and I will give him any place he will name, if he 
will come in and join us. But join us he must." ^ 

The first successes in a war, trifling as they usually are, 
have an effect altogether disproportionate to their impor- 
tance. Dunmore signalized his victory by erecting the 
king's banner at Kempsville next day — a performance 
recalling the planting of the standard by Charles I at 
* Lower Norfolk County Antiquanj, ii, 133. 



70 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Nottingham. The immediate neighborhood and some of 
the poor Pungo fisher-folk who had run away the day before 
came in and took the oath of allegiance. The people of the 
county, aware of their helplessness or impressed by Dun- 
more's success, also took the oath in considerable numbers 
and wore on their breasts the British badge of red. The 
price of red cloth rose in the Norfolk stores, and the woman 
who had interviewed Dunmore at Kempsville was shocked 
to have her husband come home wearing the familiar 
scarlet. "Oh!" she said, "is it come to this? Believe me, 
I would rather have seen you dead than to have seen you 
with this red badge." "Pshaw!" he answered, "do you 
think it has changed my mind? Don't you see how Dun- 
more is carrying all before him, and, if I can save my prop- 
erty by this step, ought I not in common prudence to 
wear it, for your sake and the children?" ^ 

Menaces were mixed with flatteries to induce the back- 
ward to take the oath. Matthew Phripp, a prominent 
merchant, who was forced into subscribing, was roundly 
rated by Dunmore for not coming in before. ^ The potent 
conjurer was fear. The governor, indeed, succeeded so 
well in his coercive policy that on November 15, 1775, he 
took the step of declaring martial law, ordering all loyal 
men to repair to the standard under the penalty of being 
considered traitors and proclaiming freedom to the slaves 
and indented servants of rebels. 

The brush at Kempsville, together with the proclama- 
tion of martial law, had the immediate effect of inducing a 
large proportion of the population of Norfolk and Princess 

^ Lower Norfolk County Antiquary, n, 136. 
8 Miscellaneous Papers, xiv, 256. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 71 

Anne to take the oath. Tories noted with exultation the 
sudden change of sentiment in the countryside. It was even 
asserted that the two counties had come in bodily except 
for a few formerly active patriots, to whom Dunmore, by 
way of making an example, refused to tender the oath.^ 
Unquestionably the citizens of Norfolk went to great 
lengths to show their loyalty on Dunmore's return to town 
from Kempsville. An entertainment regaled the weary 
and triumphant party and the British standard was erected 
before the court-house, while the timid and time-serving 
strove with each other to reach the Bible and swear alle- 
giance. ^ Andrew Sprowle, a conservative witness, stated 
that about five hundred men had taken the oath at Nor- 
folk.' Probably others came in later, for an optimistic 
Tory asserted that "Treason had not one Abettor in the 
extensive county of Princess Anne." Dunmore himself 
declared (with evident exaggeration) that three thousand 
people had sworn,* and added that with a few more men 
he would march on Williamsburg. 

With the exception of Isle of Wight, where Dunmore's 
adherents were crushed, serious signs of disaffection to the 
patriot cause began to appear in the whole lower country. 
Men in Norfolk and Princess Anne who had taken a prom- 
inent part as revolutionists were driven into hiding to es- 
cape the visitations of the British and negroes. The Isle 
of Wight patriots retaliated by tarring and feathering the 
conspicuous loyalists, which frightened others into taking 
refuge with Dunmore.^ 

* Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, xiv, 249. 

* Ibid., XIV, 256. 3 ihid., XIV, 387. 

* Virginia Gazette, January 24, 1776. 

^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 3, 92. 



n THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

The situation was undeniably one of danger for the col- 
ony. If at this time, as might well have chanced, a British 
regiment had arrived under the command of a competent 
officer, there is no telling the result. The willingness of so 
many under a little urging to take the oath of allegiance to 
the king is evidence that no great enthusiasm for the Ameri- 
can cause animated the inhabitants along the lower Chesa- 
peake. The coming of troops, entailing a prolonged and 
doubtful military struggle, might have changed indiffer- 
ence into royalist partisanship; and a Tory party would 
have arisen in Virginia as in other colonies. The energies 
of the Revolutionary government would have been largely 
expended on the internal contest at the very time when 
the resources of the colony were most needed to maintain 
the American arms in the North. From this situation Vir- 
ginia and the Confederation were saved by the speedy col- 
lapse of Dunmore's defense — a collapse due largely to 
want of support from the home government, which forgot 
for some critical months that the governor of Virginia 
still existed and flew the British flag. 

The fall of the royal governor was also owing in no 
small measure to himself. A weak and commonplace man 
put in a position of extreme difficulty, it is small wonder 
that he blundered in making those obviously opportunist 
moves which always seem wisdom to his kind. By pro- 
claiming freedom to the slaves and indented servants of 
rebels, Dunmore probably hoped to embarrass the planters 
with a servile rising at the same time that he secured re- 
cruits for himself. He may also have imagined that many 
slave-owners would declare for him in order to preserve 
their blacks or prevent an insurrection. As a result of the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 73 

proclamation a few hundred runaway slaves joined him, 
and these he furnished with arms and attempted to drill 
into soldiers. Later on a few hundred more came to his 
support and, together with the slaves he kidnapped, sailed 
away in his ships. These negroes, some of them savages 
almost ignorant of English, were of little service. The 
great majority of slaves, fortunately for themselves, re- 
mained quietly at home attending to their work. 

As the price of this paltry accession of force, Dunmore 
became detested throughout the colony. He completely 
demonstrated the fallacy of attempting to incite slave ris- 
ings — a policy which the home government had looked 
to as a means of paralyzing the resistance of the South. 
Possibly some of the negroes were suflSciently intelligent 
to doubt the advantages of freedom gained by violence : at 
all events, hesitation was wisdom here, since the majority 
of blacks who joined Dunmore, after being used as drudges 
in his fleet, died of smallpox or were carried off and never 
heard of again. Runaway negroes who took arms under 
Dunmore were not put to death by the patriots when 
captured, as would have been the case if they had risen 
of their own accord. A few of them were sold in the West 
Indies; but the greater part were sent to penal servitude 
in the lead-mines in southwestern Virginia, where they 
served the American cause with considerable effectiveness. 

The proclamation of freedom to slaves destroyed the 
last vestige of influence remaining to Dunmore. It did 
more: it made him the best-hated man in the colony and 
settled all the colonists' scruples about making war on 
him; it converted into active patriots the large class which, 
having something to lose, came to the conclusion that it 



74 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

was better ofif under the Revolutionary regime than under 
the royal administration. In fact, Dunmore's policy, by 
displaying the representatives of Britain in the character 
of incendiaries and enemies to society, had the paradoxical 
effect of converting the Revolutionists into the champions 
of law and order. The Committee of Safety, which without 
legal title had ruled Virginia solely through moral author- 
ity, was recognized henceforth by almost the entire popu- 
lation as the de jure government of the colony. 

Dunmore's performances at Norfolk at length forced 
the Committee of Safety to move against him. Edmund 
Pendleton, the chairman, was practically the directing 
head of this body and as such the most powerful man in 
Virginia during the latter part of 1775. Patrick Henry, 
in deserting the convention to become colonel of the First 
Virginia Regiment, and Jefferson and Lee, through their 
absence in Philadelphia, left the conservative party in 
power, with the result that the Revolution almost stood 
still in the fall of 1775. The Committee of Safety, indeed, 
actively supervised the work of the local committees in 
crushing disaffection, but, inconsistently enough, hesi- 
tated to attack Dunmore. His depredations, however, 
left it no recourse. On October 24, 1775, ^ the committee, 
after a lengthy discussion of the various hostile acts he 
had been guilty of, such as harboring fugitive slaves, seiz- 
ing a slave woman and other private property, and arrest- 
ing and carrying on board his ships several patriots, de- 
cided to send the Second Regiment of the line and the 
Culpeper battalion to the neighborhood of Norfolk as an 

* Miscellaneous Papers of the Committee of Safety and the Convention of 
1776. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 75 

observation force. Even then, apparently, the committee 
had no definite intention of precipitating a conflict if it 
could be avoided. 

This decision to send the Second Regiment instead of 
the First was important, inasmuch as it meant the passing 
over in favor of a subordinate commander of Patrick 
Henry, colonel of the First Regiment and ranking officer 
of the Virginia forces. While it is likely that Pendleton 
and his associates in the Committee of Safety naturally 
preferred an actual soldier like William Woodford to a 
politician entirely without military experience, they were 
also influenced by other considerations. Pendleton, the 
leader and best representative of the conservative party, 
had been opposed to Henry on many occasions beginning 
with 1765, so that the head of one faction was acting as the 
superior and director of the head of the other. Under the 
circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the popular 
orator was denied the opportunity of cementing his great- 
ness by winning a military reputation. Thus the conserva- 
tives gave him his final checkmate. 

Woodford possessed some ability as a commander and 
won a victory over Dunmore that, by the fame and popu- 
larity it gave him, served to show what it would have 
meant to a striking personality like Patrick Henry. While 
W^oodford was winning laurels, Henry ingloriously idled 
at Williamsburg with a command put to no more serious 
labor than guard-mounting. In his impatience the orator 
wondered whether it would ever be called on to do any- 
thing more as long as he remained its commander, for he 
realized that the conservatives feared his popularity.* 
* Henry's Patrick Henry, i, 333. 



76 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Indeed the committee was almost openly hostile. Although 
Henry was the superior officer, he ceased to receive re- 
ports from Woodford, who preferred to report directly 
to the committee. That body did not discourage his in- 
subordination. The Virginia force was afterwards joined 
by a North Carolina contingent under Colonel Robert 
Howe and he assumed command of the joint army, thereby 
completely doing away with Henry's shadow of authority. 
The latter attempted to assert himself and failed. He 
then appealed to the Committee of Safety, which decided 
that Woodford ought to report to him, but receive orders 
either from itself or the convention.^ In this way the demo- 
cratic leader saw himself quietly negatived in military 
affairs and relegated to garrison duty in a place where a 
battle was little likely to occur. Distrust of Henry's mili- 
tary ability was not confined to the Committee of Safety; 
Washington shared it and regretted his continuance in 
the service, and Congress passed him over to appoint 
Robert Howe and Andrew Lewis brigadier-generals. Hurt 
by this treatment, Henry resigned his commission and 
returned to civil life. It was a final choice, for he never 
went back to the army. By leaving it, he played a great 
part in the founding of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 
of which he became the first governor, and rendered im- 
portant service to the American cause in an administra- 
tive capacity; but his chief work was done before the war 
began, and possibly he made a mistake in returning to 
politics. When the technical ignorance and general medi- 
ocrity of the American officers are recollected, there seems 
no reason why a man so audacious, determined, and master- 
1 Henry's Patrick Henry, i, 343. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 77 

f ul as Patrick Henry should not have made a successful brig- 
ade commander. Politics and war have much in common. 
Woodford, the choice of the triumphant conservative 
faction, slowly made his way towards the recreant Nor- 
folk. On November 25, 1775, he arrived with his body of 
riflemen at Suffolk, in Nansemond, at the same time that 
his advance, under Lieutenant-Colonel Scott, camped 
within seven miles of Great Bridge on the South Branch 
of the Elizabeth River. In this region a large part of the 
inhabitants had declared for the royal cause, and Scott 
arrested several Tories, among them one Jim Inness, who 
had made himself prominent in Dunmore's behalf. Eight 
suspected persons, several of them women, were arrested 
at Suffolk by local patriots and turned over to Woodford 
on his arrival. Scott reported that most of the British 
troops had withdrawn from Great Bridge, leaving the post 
garrisoned by negroes and Tories. He desired leave to 
cross the South Branch of the Elizabeth River below Great 
Bridge and take this force in reverse, but Woodford cau- 
tiously refused to run the risk unless his subordinate was 
certain of the information. Detained at Suffolk by the 
need of replenishing his arms, the Virginia commander sent 
forward two companies under Major Alexander Spotswood 
to reinforce Scott. Woodford, in his report to the Commit- 
tee of Safety, repeated the account so often given of the gen- 
eral disaffection of the people of that section to the American 
cause, but added that he had heard they had begun to fall 
away from Dunmore since the coming of the colonial troops 
and that it was believed that few of them would fight. ^ 

^ Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1776. Woodford's letter of November 
26, 1776. Woodford's letters are printed in the Richmond College Histoid 
ical Papers, no. 1. 



78 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Undoubtedly Woodford carried out the wishes of his 
superiors in moving deUberately. He may also have had 
military reasons: he had been lately reinforced by the 
Nansemond militia and by a handful of gentlemen volun- 
teers, and a body of North Carolina militia was en route 
to join him. Altogether this would give him a force suffi- 
cient for his purposes. The appearance of a respectable 
body of provincial troops in the Chesapeake region at this 
time was of great importance. Dunmore's continued suc- 
cess, even in trifles, would in all probability have inaugu- 
rated a bitter civil war in the tier of southeastern counties, 
with a disastrous effect on the whole colony, but Wood- 
ford's arrival obviated this situation. He directed Scott 
to offer protection to all who would come in, including 
those who had taken Dunmore's oath, and to pledge him- 
self to seize no private property except arms and ammuni- 
tion. With the colonial troops at hand and Dunmore in a 
bellicose humor, a collision was evidently approaching. 
In view of the greatly superior strength of the provincials, 
it was rather expected that Dunmore would relinquish 
Norfolk without a fight, and it is possible that he would 
have done so but for the skirmish at Kemps ville. That 
petty triumph seems to have deluded the governor into 
the belief that he might be able to make a successful de- 
fense. Accordingly, he garrisoned a block-house at Great 
Bridge, which commanded the approach to Norfolk from 
the south, and threw up earthworks for a space of a half 
or three quarters of a mile immediately behind the town. 
These works were mere shallow entrenchments, washed 
down by each rain; and the difficulty of holding them with 
a few hundred men, mostly raw recruits, was apparent 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 79 

even to the untrained military perceptions of the Norfolk 
Tories, who gloomily anticipated the approach of the back- 
woods marksmen. But Dunmore, assuming his best air 
of confidence, prepared for battle. 

In deciding to make a stand at Norfolk, Dunmore acted 
with his characteristic unwisdom. True, Norfolk was 
commanded by the sea, but it could also be attacked by 
land and a considerable force was now converging for that 
purpose. Since the provincial army could be indefinitely 
increased while the governor had only a handful of trust- 
worthy troops, the continuance of the defense was de- 
pendent on the arrival of reinforcements from England; 
and this, in view of the siege of Boston, then under way, 
was not an immediate probability. Dunmore had small 
chance of holding the town. He might have been justi- 
fied, however, in making the effort provided he had no 
other resort, no stronger position. But he did have it. 
There was one part of the colony where the party com- 
manding the sea might hold out indefinitely and that was 
the Eastern Shore, the peninsula jutting down from 
Maryland. This section, the "Kingdom of Accomac," 
displayed little more patriotic enthusiasm than Norfolk, 
and Dunmore, with his fleet and his few regulars, could 
have overpowered the resistance in the southern end of 
the peninsula, Northampton, and have secured a base of 
operations from which it would have been diflficult to dis- 
lodge him. As long as the British fleet swept the Bay, the 
Virginians must have had to make a great detour through 
Maryland in order to reach him. 

The Northampton Committee, realizing the peril of 
the Eastern Shore, feared and expected that Dunmore 



80 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

would descend upon it.* But, fortunately for Virginia, the 
governor preferred to gamble on the chance of being able 
to thwart the superior numbers of his enemy by some 
lucky blow. Possibly, too, he felt that withdrawal from 
Norfolk might be fatal to his prestige. At all events, he 
decided to hold his ground. 

Great Bridge, where he hoped to check the provincials, 
was the most important strategic point near Norfolk. 
The South Branch of the Elizabeth River, running in a 
southeasterly direction, flows languidly through a marsh 
and was here spanned by a bridge, from which causeways 
stretched in both directions to firm ground. Two islands 
rose above the swamp at the ends of the bridge : on the one 
to the north Dunmore had built his fort; the other con- 
tained only a few shanties. The stockade was supplied 
with two four-pounders and several swivels and wall -pieces, 
and was garrisoned by runaway negroes officered by ser- 
geants of regulars and Scotch Tories from Norfolk.^ Wood- 
ford, advancing from Suffolk about the first of December, 
reached Great Bridge and took position on the south side 
of the river. Immediately the cannon of the fort opened 
on the provincials, who replied with rifle fire. One Virginian 
was killed; the loss on the other side was unknown, but 
probably greater. Desultory skirmishing went on for sev- 
eral days along the banks of the river from Great Bridge 
towards Norfolk, and both parties attempted to seize and 
hold all the boats on their side; the provincials to secure a 
means of passing Great Bridge, the loyalists to prevent 

^ Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, xrv, 250. 
2 Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1776. Woodford's letter of December 
4, 1775. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 81 

any such flank movement. Woodford, who had cannon 
coming up with the North Carolina reinforcement, was 
reluctant to force the passage of the stream in the face of 
the enemy, and threw up breastworks near a church some 
distance back from his end of the causeway. Seeing that 
the houses on the south island furnished excellent cover 
for riflemen in a contest with the fort, some slaves crossed 
the river in the night of December 3, 1775, and set fire to 
them. The following night Woodford retaliated for the 
burning of the houses by sending across the river a scouting 
party which fired a building, killed one or two negroes, and 
took several of them prisoners. The provincial oflficers 
were anxious to execute the slaves by way of example, 
but the commander decided to leave their fate to the con- 
vention.^ Two nights later, on December 6, Woodford 
sent another detachment across the river to attack the 
enemy's boat guards lower down stream. The riflemen 
surprised a mixed force of whites and blacks and routed 
it with a loss of five killed and several wounded and pris- 
oners. ^ 

Finally, the governor, when he found that the post at 
Great Bridge was seriously threatened, sent his regulars 
out from Norfolk to attack the colonial force. His fortifi- 
cations back of the town were now pretty well completed 
and mounted about fifteen pieces of artillery. He had also 
made every effort to raise recruits: Joshua Whitehurst 
and Charles Henley, two prominent Tories, were dis- 
patched through the country with an armed party, to 
order the militiamen into Norfolk and to lay requisitions 

* Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1776. Woodford's letter of December 5, 
1775. 2 Woodford's letter of December 7, 1775. 



82 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

of money and supplies upon people of means. Few men 
were obtained, though probably a good deal of plunder 
rewarded the raiders.^ 

The British force at Great Bridge numbered about 500 
men, but only the 200 regulars of the Fourteenth Regi- 
ment were trustworthy; the 300 negroes and loyalists 
served chiefly to swell the array. Woodford's command 
contained about 700 men; of whom 430 belonged to the 
Second Regiment and the rest were minute-men, ^ A skir- 
mish-line of provincials occupied earthworks thrown up 
along the edge of the swamp, about 150 yards from the 
bridge : the main force lay encamped near the church sev- 
eral hundred yards farther back. 

Woodford's position, approachable only by a narrow 
causeway, offered in that day of short-range firearms the 
best possible advantage to the defenders and every dis- 
advantage to the attackers, who had to advance in closed 
file and without opportunity to deploy. Nevertheless, the 
regulars received orders to cross the bridge and take the 
breastwork by storm. 

On the morning of December 9, 1775, the colonial troops 
awoke to the discharge of cannon and musketry from the 
fort. A lull followed, and then were heard the voices of 
the British oflScers calling their men to arms. Presently 
the enemy's force, with the regulars in front and the loy- 
alists and negroes in the rear, crossed the bridge to the 
south island. A picket stationed there by Woodford was 
soon driven in and the remaining houses set ablaze. Mean- 
time the Virginians in the trenches were keeping up a brisk 

» Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1776. Titus Meanwell's letter of Decem- 
ber 7, 1775. * Woodford's letter of December 10, 1775. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 83 

fire and some little confusion ensued among the Tories and 
negroes. Leaving them behind on the island, 120 regulars 
under command of Captain Fordyce advanced resolutely 
along the causeway leading to the earthworks. These were 
held by 100 riflemen, and the officer in charge ordered 
them to reserve their fire until the enemy came within 
fifty yards. At this range the provincials opened with 
deadly effect, sweeping the causeway almost from end to 
end. Fordyce, though wounded, continued to lead on his 
men until he went down struck by a dozen balls. The sur- 
viving British, unable to face the withering fire, fell back 
precipitately to the island, where they rallied and replied 
to the Americans with two field-pieces that had been 
hauled across the bridge from the fort. As soon as he saw 
the repulse of the regulars, Woodford brought up his 
main force to the entrenchments, and the British there- 
upon retreated over the bridge into the fort. 

Woodford, with his habitual caution, awaited another 
attack, but the abandonment of the fort on the night after 
the engagement showed the completeness of his victory. 
Although the action had been a mere skirmish as regards 
the numbers engaged and the losses, it had important con- 
sequences. Nearly all the regulars had been killed or 
wounded, and the loyalists and negroes were demoralized. 
Of more consequence still, Dunmore himself was utterly 
dismayed by the catastrophe and abandoned all thought 
of further defending Norfolk. 

The next day 200 North Carolinians arrived, bringing 
the patriot force up to nearly 900 men. On December 12, 
another detachment of North Carolina militia, led by Colo- 
nel Robert Howe, joined the Virginia army. On Decem- 



84 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

ber 11, Woodford had issued a proclamation to the people 
of Norfolk and Princess Anne disclaiming any intention of 
molesting those who had taken the oath of allegiance to 
England, but at the same time he took care to send a force 
to Kempsville to seize all persons leaving Norfolk after 
the action at Great Bridge.^ A number of Tories and 
British deserters were arrested, among them a Scotch 
loyalist named Hamilton, who had served at the fort. 
By way of punishment, Woodford handcuffed him to a 
captive black. 

The joint force, under Woodford and Howe, marched 
on Norfolk, something more than one thousand strong. 
It met with no sign of resistance and entered the town in 
the night of December 14, 1775. ^ In passing through the 
dark streets the troops were fired on and three men were 
wounded, but Dunmore, with his remnant of regulars, his 
runaway slaves, and a number of Tories, had fled aboard 
the ships, which still lay in the harbor. More than a hun- 
dred prisoners, mostly loyalists and negroes, were the 
fruits of the occupation of Norfolk: some of them were 
sent to Williamsburg by a court of inquiry for trial before 
the convention then sitting. The American commanders 
offered protection to the townspeople on condition of 
immediate submission, and no depredations seem to have 
been committed by their soldiers. Nevertheless, the gen- 
eral feeling in Norfolk favored the royal cause, and the 
magistrates carried a copy of Woodford and Howe's proc- 
lamation to Dunmore on board his ship. Meanwhile 
Woodford made no effort to annoy the ships lying a 
little distance offshore, though the riflemen patrolled 

» Woodford's letter of December 10, 1775. ^ Ibid., December 14. 1775. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 85 

the harbor and captured a snow carrying salt to the 
fleet. 1 

For some days the ships in the harbor and the troops 
along the shore were satisfied to watch each other quietly; 
the people, uncertain of the outcome, cautiously refrained 
from showing partisanship on either side. Woodford re- 
ported that they were thoroughly disaffected without hav- 
ing any inclination whatever to fight: only a few gentle- 
men received the provincial troops with any cordiality.^ 
Meanwhile distress reigned in the fleet, whither a number 
of loyalists had hurried with their wives and children at 
the news of Woodford's approach. The warships, ill-pre- 
pared in the best of times for passengers, at this juncture 
lacked everything to make life comfortable; and the women 
and children suffered greatly. Finally, the harassed loyal- 
ists petitioned the American commanders for leave to 
come on shore. The latter answered that the women and 
children might land on certain conditions, but that the men 
would be held as prisoners subject to the judgment of the 
convention in their cases. Few Tories were willing to 
accept such terms. 

Through the last days of the year the hostile forces 
continued to do nothing but watch each other. The British 
ships still received supplies from the town by landing boats 
at a distillery and ropewalk on the outskirts and at other 
points. Howe recommended that these places which 
served as supply posts be destroyed, but nothing was 
done. Dunmore, on his part, had the effrontery to com- 
plain to the town authorities that his boat crews had met 
with ill-treatment. Strange as it may seem, a town meeting 

» Woodford's letter of December 17, 1775. ^ Jbid., December 16, 1775. 



86 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

discussed this complaint at length, and a motion was 
made to allow boats to come ashore for provisions, but it 
was rejected. Dunmore can hardly have been so foolish 
as to suppose that the colonial commanders would allow 
him to receive supplies from Norfolk unopposed; it is 
probable that he merely sought an excuse for the action 
he had already determined on. At all events, early in the 
afternoon of January 1, 1776, the British ships, drawn up 
in a line before the town, opened fire on it with more than 
a hundred guns. Under cover of the cannonade, which 
lasted with little intermission throughout the afternoon 
and night, sailors landed and set fire to houses at several 
places. The riflemen posted along the water-front drove 
off the landing-parties, but not before the wooden build- 
ings near the wharves were blazing. From time to time, 
in the confusion of the scene, boat crews came ashore, 
only to be driven back immediately to the water. The 
defenders suffered no greater loss from the bombardment 
than a few men wounded, but several of the wretched in- 
habitants, rushing out through the streets in the winter 
night to get beyond the range of the guns, were killed by 
cannon balls. ^ 

The fires, begun by balls or landing-parties, spread with 
great rapidity, because the provincial soldiers, instead of 
attempting to extinguish them, seized the opportunity to 
plunder and destroy on their own behalf, determined, as 
they said, "to make hay while the sun shines." ^ Break- 
ing into rum-shops and warehouses, many of them soon 
became drunk and went in gangs from house to house, 

* Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1776. Robert Howe's letter of January 
7, 1776. 2 Legislative Petitions. Norfolk (B4328). 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 87 

smashing in doors, dragging out spoils, and then applying 
the torch. Household goods of every kind were sold in 
the streets for a song to anybody willing to buy. The de- 
struction caused by the ships was confined to the water- 
front, but the Virginia soldiers involved the whole place 
in the catastrophe. On January 2, 1776, when the firing 
had ceased, the riflemen continued the work of rapine 
without interference on the part of their officers — appar- 
ently even with their connivance. Only on the third day did 
Woodford put an end to the sack by forbidding the burn- 
ing of houses under severe penalty, but by that time more 
than two thirds of Norfolk was in ashes. In February, 
1776, the remainder was destroyed by order of the conven- 
tion in order to deprive Dunmore of shelter. 

The responsibility for the burning of Norfolk rests upon 
both Dunmore and the provincial troops. Although, ac- 
cording to the evidence, the riflemen wrought by far the 
greater share of the ruin, the governor began the work of 
destruction. The testimony, indeed, is very conflicting, 
but the statements of Woodford and Howe, who wished 
to absolve themselves from blame in a discreditable busi- 
ness, are probably more completely ex 'parte than those of 
the numerous witnesses who gave detailed accounts of the 
havoc made by the American soldiers. Furthermore, the 
mayor and council of Norfolk declared to the assembly, 
on November 16, 1776, that most of the destruction was 
the work of the troops.^ The commissioners appointed by 
the government in 1777 to investigate the matter substan- 
tiated this account with striking figures. They declared 
that Dunmore had burned 32 houses on November 30, 
» Legislative Petitions. Norfolk (B4188). 



88 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

1775, and only 19 on January 1, 1776. The soldiers, on the 
other hand, had destroyed 863 houses, and 416 more had 
been destroyed by order of the convention.^ 

The bombardment of Norfolk was a crowning piece of 
stupidity. Dunmore could not have hoped to drive out an 
overwhelming and mobile force by a mere cannonade and 
he had no troops to use in following up this act of aggres- 
sion. Under such circumstances, his firing on the town 
was a mere act of revenge for being driven out of the col- 
ony — the mean retaliation of a man unable in any other 
way to return fancied injuries. The full measure of his 
folly may be seen when it becomes evident, in the light of 
the commissioners' report, that he played into the hands 
of his enemies. Norfolk was the one place in Virginia 
where the king had supporters and where the royal gov- 
ernor had been given a warm reception; and, when he 
turned his guns against it, he insured the ruin of his own 
friends. An open seaport and difficult of access from the 
interior, it could have been kept from falling into British 
hands only by the constant presence of a large force, which 
the colonial government could not afford to maintain in 
an isolated position. Sooner or later a fleet with troops on 
board was bound to sail in and turn Norfolk once more into 
a busy port and a center of British influence. This the 
Williamsburg authorities saw clearly enough, but it is 
most unlikely that they would have ventured in cold blood 
on the odious course of destroying the town as a precau- 
tionary measure. That Norfolk, when the fleet at last ar- 
rived, was a mere heap of ruins instead of a convenient 
base of operations on the Southern coast was due to Dun- 
^ Report of Commissioners. MS. in Virginia State Library. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 89 

more's ill-considered anger, which gave his astute oppo- 
nents the chance to do their work and cast the odium on 
him. Dunmore was destined always to be outwitted. 
Howe expressed the sentiment of the provincial army a 
few days later in reporting that his men had burned the 
obnoxious distillery where the British landed. The de- 
struction of Norfolk, he said, would be beneficial to the 
public. It was a place the enemy could seize at any time, 
inhabited by a population wholly given up to trade and 
without devotion to the American cause. If held by the 
British, it would have continued importing prohibited 
goods and thus would have neutralized the Continental 
Association in two colonies.^ There was general satisfac- 
tion that it was no more. 

The relative position of the ships and the troops re- 
mained the same after the destruction of the town; the 
fleet rode at anchor and the riflemen skulked along the 
shore looking for shots. Occasional brushes between them 
and landing-parties of sailors relieved the tedium. On 
January 21, 1776, two of the men-of-war, the Liverpool 
and Otter, opened a heavy fire on the ruins to cover a party 
which set fire to a few buildings still standing near a wharf. 
A sharp skirmish followed between sailors and "shirtmen" 
in which both sides lost a number killed and wounded.'^ 
At last, on February 6, 1776, the provincials abandoned 
Norfolk, after sending away the poor people still living 
there, burning all the remaining houses and demolishing 
Dunmore's entrenchments. The troops were quartered 
at Kempsville, Great Bridge, and Suffolk, points more 

^ Robert Howe's letter of January 6, 1777. 
' Virginia Gazette, January 26, 1776. 



90 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

accessible than Norfolk and easier to provision.^ Shortly 
afterwards the frigate Roebuck arrived with some troops 
and enabled Dunmore to take possession of the village 
of Portsmouth across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk.^ 
From this place as a base he sent out along Chesapeake 
Bay tenders and ships, which took a number of American 
vessels as prizes and occasionally made raids on the planta- 
tions along the water. In spite of these successes, how- 
ever, Dunmore's position was most precarious, as provi- 
sions were scarce and jail fever raged in the fleet. Nor did 
the tenders on their marauding expeditions always have 
it one way. In April, 1776, a tender captured a New Eng- 
land schooner in the Rappahannock, but was attacked in 
turn by sailboats manned by people of the neighborhood 
and escaped with diflSculty after abandoning the prize.^ 
Moreover, two of the ships, the Liverpool and Roebuck, 
suffered rough handling in an engagement with row-galleys 
in the upper Chesapeake. 

The patriot government now prepared to make another 
effort to rid the country of Dunmore. On March 29, 1776, 
Charles Lee, major-general in the Continental service, 
arrived at Williamsburg to take command of all the forces 
in Virginia, Continental and local. He immediately began 
to organize his troops and attempted to raise a cavalry 
force, which was especially needed. When the organiza- 
tion was sufficiently complete, he advanced to Norfolk, 
and on May 20, 1776, fought a skirmish from the shore 
with the ships. A few days later, Dunmore, after dis- 
mantling some new entrenchments he had raised, sailed 
away with his whole following.^ Charles Lee had mean- 

1 Virginia Gazette, February 9, 1776. 2 /j^-^.^ February 23, 1776. 

» Ibid.. May 3, 1776. < Ibid., May 24. 1776. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 91 

while gone to Portsmouth, where he busied himself in 
crushing disaffection. Washington's eccentric second in 
command excited as much amusement by his long green 
trousers, called " sherry- vallies," and his litter of dogs ^ 
— habitual sharers of his bedroom — as his supposed 
military talents and experience aroused admiration. One 
of his first acts on reaching Portsmouth was to urge the 
Committee of Safety to deport the inhabitants of Prin- 
cess Anne in order to break communications between the 
countryside and Dunmore's fleet. The committee there- 
upon decreed that all people living within a line drawn 
from Great Bridge to Kempsville and thence to the ocean 
should remove into the interior, as well as all the people 
within the two counties who had repaired to Dunmore's 
standard. Dissatisfied with this measure, which was not 
carried out in all its harshness, Lee ventured to demolish 
the houses of several well-known loyalists in Portsmouth 
by way of salutary example, as he reported to Edmund 
Pendleton in a letter of May 4, 1776: — 

Sir: 

As I consider it my duty to make a report of every transaction 
that is not merely and purely military to the Committee I hope 
They will excuse my not having done it before, but as They were 
yesterday so employed in the busyness of the Princess Anne 
Petition, I thought it might be troublesome to enter upon the 
subject. 

As I found that the Inhabitants of Portsmouth had univer- 
sally taken the oaths to Ld Dunmore, and as the Town was, I 
believe justly, reputed the great channel through which his Lord- 
ship received the most exact and minute intelligence of all our 
actions and designs I thought it incumbent on me and agreeable 

^ Lower Norfolk County Antiquary, i, 99. 



92 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

to the spirit of your instructions to remove the People without 
exception, for even the Women and Children had learnd the art 
and practic'd with address the Office of Spies, — a considerable 
quantity of valuable articles were found in the houses of Mes'rs 
Sprowl, Goodrich and Jemmison as molasses salt and other things 
were wanted by the Public — I have order'd the Officer command- 
ing the Party to make out an inventory of these articles which 
are to be laid before your Board. 

As the Town of Portsmouth will afford so convenient shelter 
and quarters to the Enemy on the supposition They make this 
part of the world their object, itwou'd (strictly speaking) be per- 
haps right and politick to destroy it totally — but I thought it a 
matter of too serious concern for me to execute without the in- 
junction or sanction of the Committee — the houses indeed of 
some of the most notorious Traitors I ventur'd to demolish with 
the view of intimidating the neighborhood from trifling any 
longer or flying in the face of your ordinances — for unless I have 
been grossly misinformd these People have been Encouraged 
from no examples having been made, into a most barefaced open 
intercourse with the Enemy — Sprowls Goodrich's Jemmisons and 
Spaddens houses have on this principle been demolishd — the 
last Gentleman (Spadden) is now a Prisoner at Suffolk accused 
and I am told convicted of having been on board Ld Dunmore's 
fleet, since his acquittal by the Committee of Norfolk. 

As We had undoubted intelligence that Dunmore's Fleet and 
Army were amply and constantly supplied with provisions and 
refreshments of every kind from that tract of Country lying be- 
tween the Southern and Eastern Branches, as well as from Tan- 
ners Creek, and that the positive ordinance levell'd by the Con- 
vention against this species of treason was totally contemn'd 
and disregarded and as it is a notorious truth that from an habit- 
ual commission of any criminal act be it ever so heinous. He who 
commits it at length persuades himself that there is no crime in 
it at all — These Worthies not only every day more constantly 
and openly carried on this dangerous and pernicious commerce 
but even (as it is said) justified it in their conversation. I say. 
Sir, considering these circumstances, it appear'd to me absolutely 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 93 

necessary as it did to the other Officers and the Committee of 
Gentlemen from Suffolk to take some vigorous step on the spot 
which might intimidate the whole knot of these miscreants from 
this pernicious commerce — a Mr. Hopkins infamous for his 
principles and conduct and who has a son now a soldier in Ld 
Dunmores Army was fortunately the Man detected — He was 
seiz'd in his return from the Fleet where He had been with a 
supply of provisions — He at first prevaricated and perjured him- 
self very handsomely, but at length, not indeed untill He was 
impeachd by his Companion, confess'd — the sentiments of the 
Committee and of the other officers concurring with my own — 
We determined after having secur'd the furniture to set his house 
on fire in his presence — this step was not perhaps consistent 
with the regular mode prescrib'd of proceeding — but there are 
occasions when the necessity will excuse a deviation from the 
regular mode of proceeding — and this I hope will appear to 
the Committee to be one of these occasions when irregularity is 
excusable — I must, here. Gentlemen, beg leave to repeat my 
assurances that if ever in my military capacity I shou'd fall into 
any measure which is more properly within the Province of the 
Civil, it must entirely proceed from mistaken inadvertency, 
never from design — and that when this happens, so far from 
being offended at the admonitions, or even reprimands of the 
Committee that I shall think myself obliged to them.^ 

The effects of this patriotic arson are not known, but 
Dunmore had ended his career in Virginia, and Toryism, 
never very strong as a force, was now completely crushed. 
The governor found an opportunity to make a final blun- 
der before vanishing from the scene. Sailing out of Nor- 
folk Harbor, with ships crowded with runaway and stolen 
negroes and wretched refugees, he cast anchor at Gwynn's 
Island off the Gloucester shore. On this island — suffi- 
ciently large for prolonged occupation — Dunmore landed 
» Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1776. 



94 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

his disease-stricken crews and threw up fortifications, for- 
getful of the fact that his ships lay within easy cannon-range 
of the mainland. The appearance of Dunmore's sails was 
the signal for a muster in strength of the local militia. It 
lacked the means for immediate attack, but James Barron, 
captain in the Virginia navy, dealt Dunmore a heavy blow 
by capturing a transport filled with Highlander troops 
bound up the Bay for Gwynn's Island. This was the pre- 
lude to the end. By the beginning of July a large num- 
ber of militiamen had gathered opposite the island, com- 
manded by Andrew Lewis, an officer of great experience 
in Indian warfare and of much natural military talent. 
On July 9, 1776, Lewis opened a cannonade on the fleet 
lying off the island and on the entrenchments. The ships 
suffered severely from the fire and were soon forced to 
slip cables and hurriedly put out, leaving behind most of 
the effects that had been landed.^ Want of boats alone 
prevented the Virginians from pushing over to the island 
and taking many prisoners. Next morning, when they had 
gathered enough boats to visit the island, they were horror- 
stricken to find it literally covered with the dead and 
dying, the victims of smallpox and jail fever. The dirty, 
crowded ships had become floating lazarettos. 

Exiled from Gwynn's Island, Dunmore tried to land 
on St. George's Island in Maryland, but was beaten off 
by militia. He plundered and burned several plantation 
houses along the Potomac and again attacked St. George's 
Island, with no better luck. Despairing of finding a refuge 
in the Chesapeake, he stood down the Bay with all his 
fleet and sailed out of the Capes and American history. 
1 Virginia Gazette, July 12, 1776. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NORFOLK 95 

So intense was the dislike Dunmore inspired that he 
remained for several generations under the calumny of 
legend. Although he enjoyed considerable popularity 
before 1775 and entertained at the "Palace" in Williams- 
burg, where the local gentry loved to meet his charming 
wife and swains to worship his young daughters, he had by 
1776 become an enemy to society, the instigator of slave 
insurrection and the robber and plunderer. As usual in 
such cases, his sufficiently numerous errors and sins did 
not satisfy. Tradition made him out the secret betrayer 
of the colony in the Indian war of 1774, who incited the 
savage to lay waste the frontier in order to weaken resist- 
ance to the imperial authority. And in this guise of an- 
archist and assassin the last English governor has come 
down almost to our own times. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 

The easy triumph of the Revolution in Virginia was 
primarily due to thorough organization. The sentiment 
of the colony was, beyond doubt, overwhelmingly patri- 
otic, but it is conceivable that a considerable loyalist, or 
neutral, faction might have existed if public opinion had 
been less forcefully translated into action. The county 
committees, composed of prominent and experienced men 
working with a perfectly definite aim, crushed disaffection 
in the beginning with a ruthless efficiency that left British 
sympathizers no alternative but exile or quiet submission. 

Local committees of correspondence sprang up in Vir- 
ginia in 1774. Late in the year, in conformity with the 
recommendation of Congress, county committees were or- 
ganized to carry into effect the Continental Association, 
that boycott designed to force the English government to 
terms by loss of trade. The earliest of these local commit- 
tees arose in the eastern counties, showing that no class 
was so eager to support Congress as the large landowners. 
Reluctant as they were a year later to go to war, they were 
now foremost in the boycott, because to their minds it was 
legal and entirely consistent with attachment to the crown. 
These tidewater planters, men trained in politics and 
affairs, inaugurated the committee system and the com- 
mercial resistance to Britain and thus inadvertently led 
the colony into the very thing they dreaded. The local 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 97 

committees played an important part in the life of the com- 
munity from the very start. Their authority, if not legal, 
was yielded by general consent and was extensive in scope. 
They were chosen by the freeholders of the counties as- 
sembled at the court-houses, virtually in the same way 
that the Burgesses were elected; and these mass meetings 
seem to have passed ojBf usually without incident — much 
more like the routine pollings for members of the assembly 
than incipient rebellion. The committees, consisting for 
the most part of prominent and trusted men, stood for law 
and order even though they themselves were untrammeled 
by ordinary legal restraints. The selections generally rep- 
resented spontaneous popular choice, but sometimes they 
were arranged after practical political methods with which 
the present generation is only too familiar. Thus, some 
of the people of Chesterfield in August, 1775, complained 
to the convention that the county committee had been 
elected by a mere handful of voters, who did not clearly 
understand its importance, and that as a consequence 
several unworthy members had been chosen. They there- 
fore requested another election.^ Similarly, in Hanover 
the complaint arose that tellers of the ballots at the elec- 
tion took it upon themselves to exclude persons actually 
elected in favor of others not receiving a majority.^ Usu- 
ally in the eastern counties men of the conservative faction 
that had so long ruled Virginia predominated in the com- 
mittees. This was fortunate for the Revolution. Begun 
under the auspices of the upper classes, the body of the 
people came into it as a matter of course, and with few 

^ Legislative Petitions. Chesterfield (A4072). 
* Journal of the May Convention of 1776, H. 



98 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

misgivings. Furthermore, the local rulers were able to 
employ ostracism — at first their only weapon — with 
far greater restraint and success than men without posi- 
tion could possibly have done. In their hands it proved a 
formidable instrument in the early stages of the Revolu- 
tion for suppressing faint-hearted royalists and bringing 
about at least a show of harmony. 

The committees began their work with great energy and 
admirable system. Counties were divided into districts 
and each district was assigned to a subcommittee of the 
county committee. Owing to the care for detail observed, 
practically the whole population of the colony was sub- 
jected to an espionage, which, though it employed no 
regular spies, was exceedingly efficient. Not only viola- 
tions of the Continental Association, but disaffection of 
any kind, even careless words, met with prompt investi- 
gation. The only alternative for the offender, besides sub- 
mission, was exile; for exile naturally followed as the result 
of the odium cast on those openly published as hostile. In 
the vacation of regular tribunals, closed by the Revolution, 
the committees not only exercised the functions of a court 
of wide jurisdiction, but enjoyed executive powers as well. 
Since they ordinarily included a considerable proportion 
of justices of the peace, the suspension of courts had very 
little effect on good order. Seldom has a great political 
revolution been attended with less violence than the close 
of the British administration in Virginia and the opening 
of the republican era. 

The first case of disaffection acted on by a committee, 
so far as known, was not a prosecution for a violation of 
the Continental Association, but for an expression of opin- 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 99 

ion. On November 8, 1774, the Westmoreland Commit- 
tee, including some of the most prominent persons in the 
colony, sat in judgment on David Wardrobe, a Scotch 
school-teacher, who had written home rather indiscreetly 
about local conditions. Through inadvertence or a mis- 
understanding, the letter was published, and was now 
laid before the committee as a contribution to the columns 
of a Glasgow newspaper. Wardrobe had charged the 
planters with taking the lead in one of those effigy-burn- 
ings so dear to the heart of the eighteenth century, and 
had described the common people as showing no enthusi- 
asm for the roasting of Lord North, There was sufficient 
truth in the charge to exasperate the committee, which 
summoned the school-teacher to appear before it. He 
admitted that the letter was partly his, whereupon the 
committee, preserving that euphemistic form so character- 
istic of the leaders of the Revolution, "expressed a desire" 
that the vestry of Cople Parish should deprive Wardrobe 
of the use of the vestry-house as a schoolroom and that 
parents sliould withdraw their children from his school. 
Wardrobe was further ordered to write a retraction of his 
letter and to appear again before the committee at a later 
date. He wrote the apology, but not in terms satisfactory 
to the committee, and failed to make his appearance at 
the appointed time; so that the gazettes presently recom- 
mended that the poor pedagogue be "regarded as a wicked 
enemy of America and be treated as such." ^ 

The ruin of this Scotchman was sufficient evidence of the 



* American Archives, i, 970. Another early case was that of Paul 
Thilman, a notice concerning which, dated November 12, 1774, was pub- 
lished in the Virginia Gazette. 



100 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

unpleasant results likely to attend a free expression of 
opinion, even in a private letter. The committees, so 
prompt to punish unkind criticism of Revolutionary meth- 
ods, were of course not behindhand in enforcing the boy- 
cott provisions of the Continental Association. The slight- 
est violation of any of the articles brought an immediate 
summons to the offender to appear before the commit- 
tee and explain his conduct. Those summoned seldom 
failed to come and defend themselves as in a court of law, 
for failure to appear or to show proper contrition meant 
being published in the newspapers as "inimical to the 
liberties of America" — a serious penalty. The great ma- 
jority of people acquiesced in the repressive methods of 
the committees, or at least complied outwardly with their 
demands. Country gentlemen enforced the Association; 
but its burdens fell chiefly on the merchants, a small but 
fairly prosperous class beginning to be of some importance 
in the colony. The latter could not be expected to show 
any great enthusiasm for a measure so ruinous to them as 
the Association; yet they were powerless to resist in the 
face of the numbers and organization of the planters, who 
were bent on worsting the English government by means 
of a commercial war and at any cost. The great majority 
of Virginia merchants were attached to Great Britain, no 
less by interest than by their Scottish birth and training. 
They had come to America to make their fortunes, and 
had settled in Norfolk, or in some of the other small towns 
scattered through the colony, or ran stores at cross-roads 
and endured the condescension of the planters, who looked 
on trade much as did their squire brethren in old England. 
These traders faced with a natural lack of ardor the pros- 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 101 

pect of indefinite suspension of business and probable ruin. 
The political thinkers were the i)lanters. Living a life of 
comparative leisure and educated chiefly in the direction 
of law and politics, they drew from the pages of Locke and 
Sidney theories of republicanism and precedents for rev- 
olutionary activity. This all-powerful agricultural inter- 
est was able to overawe the merchants, who were quite as 
hostile to the Revolution as the commercial classes in the 
Northern colonies, but had no large towns like Philadel- 
phia or New York to serve as centers of influence. 

The attempts of merchants to evade or resist the Asso- 
ciation were promptly punished, as the scanty notices in 
the gazettes grimly show. It was practically impossible to 
escape the minute inspection of the subcommittees, which 
were kept well informed of the conduct and sentiments of 
every individual in their bailiwicks. Nor did they hesitate 
at the most intrusive pryings in order to enforce the Asso- 
ciation. To prevent any advance in the price of goods — 
a cardinal sin in the Association catechism — the com- 
mitteemen rode from store to store examining ledgers: 
increase in prices or refusal to open books they punished 
by warning people to have no further dealings with the 
offenders. Thus in Caroline, on December 10, 1774, the 
subcommittees appointed to inspect merchants' books 
reported that some of the merchants had willingly shown 
their accounts and had been found to observe the Associa- 
tion, while others had refused to allow their books to be 
seen and were suspected of disobedience. The county com- 
mittee then warned the people, " as they would avoid being 
considered the Enemies to American Liberty, not to have 
any Dealings with these merchants until they shall give 



102 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the Satisfaction required." ^ Under this threat the obsti- 
nate merchants allowed their books to be examined and 
were found to have obeyed the Association. ^ In Char- 
lotte a merchant who refused to open his books for exami- 
nation was punished by having his customers warned 
against him. Tea, of course, was anathema, both to the 
Association and to patriotic citizens. In Northampton the 
committee assigned Littleton Savage to receive such tea 
as remained in the county, which the people surrendered to 
the amount of four hundred pounds. Some gentlemen, in 
their enthusiasm, brought their tea to the court-house, 
requesting that it be publicly burned, "in which reason- 
able request," the narrator states, "they were instantly 
gratified." ^ 

A great and often involuntary violation of the Associa- 
tion was the reception of goods after the date fixed as the 
limit for importation. There were many such cases. In 
Henrico, Robert Pleasants informed the committee that 
he had received imported goods after the time expiration, 
whereupon the committee ordered that his goods, together 
with other lots, be sold as directed by the Association.^ 
The same thing happened at Hampton, where George 
Graham delivered up goods recently come to him.^ Goods 
were also sold in Norfolk. Indeed, in the early part of 1775 
the Association seems to have been faithfully enforced 
in the last-named place and to have so continued as long 
as the local committee exercised supervision. In deference 
to the strong patriotic feeling Captain Howard Esten, 
about to put to sea, applied for a certificate that he had 

^ Virginia Gazette, January 14, 1775. ^ jud,, February 4, 1775. 

» Ibid. * Ibid., February 11, 1775. ^ Ibid., January 28, 1775. 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 103 

taken nothing on board his ship except a ballast of lumber.^ 
Sales of condemned goods seldom brought more than cost 
and often less, but occasionally they yielded a profit, 
which was devoted to the Boston sufferers. The profit on 
the sale in January, 1775, of Andrew Woodrow's imports 
into King George amounted to £19 14s.^ The case of Dr. 
Alexander Gordon, of Norfolk, attracted much attention. 
He had received a consignment of medicines that he refused 
to turn over to the local committee for sale, insisting on 
keeping it for himself. The Norfolk Committee conse- 
quently advertised him as a violator of the Association. It 
meted out even more severe condemnation to John Brown, 
a Norfolk merchant, who — strange namesake of him of 
Ossawatomie — violated the Association most flagrantly 
by importing slaves and concealing their arrival. Upon 
the discovery of this importation Brown denied having 
given the order for the purchase, a statement subsequently 
proved false by his letter-book. The committee then de- 
clared that he had "willfully and perversely violated the 
Continental Association." ' Captain Sampson, of the 
snow Elizabeth, was likewise advertised for violating the 
non-importation regulation. He had brought in a cargo 
of salt, and the Association required that cargoes should 
be carried back whence they came : instead, the captain at- 
tempted to carry away a shipload of lumber, and, on being 
summoned by the committee, appealed for protection to 
a British warship in the harbor. The committee imme- 
diately denounced him as an enemy to American liberty.^ 
Exportation was watched as carefully as importation. 

* Virginia Gazette, January 14, 1775. * Ibid., January 28, 1775. 

« Ibid., March 25, 1775. * Ibid., April 15, 1775. 



104 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

The Nansemond committee in August, 1775, tried two 
merchants of Suffolk, Donaldson and Hamilton, on the 
charge of shipping provisions to Boston contrary to a non- 
exportation resolution of the New York Committee of 
Correspondence which had been acceded to by several 
other provinces. The merchants proved that their ship- 
ment was intended for Antigua, but that the brig carrying 
it had been taken into Boston Harbor by a British cruiser. 
The same men were tried on a second charge of shipping 
butter and hemp to Boston in April, 1775, and again ac- 
quitted, as they showed that the New York importation 
resolution had not been passed at that date.^ Prices of 
commodities were also watched with jealous eyes. In 
Surry a complaint was lodged against Robert Kennan for 
selling salt, a necessity diflScult to obtain, at an advanced 
price. Upon Kennan's acknowledgment of his fault the 
committee recommended people not to deal with him.^ 

Merciless as the committees were in enforcing the Asso- 
ciation, it does not appear that they were often unjust. 
On the contrary, they sometimes acted in defense of the 
accused whom they believed innocent. The case of John 
Parsons was not singular: he was a shipbuilder, and was 
reputed to have landed and stored goods at Urbanna in 
Middlesex. The Middlesex Committee on examination 
found the tale to be false and published a statement in the 
gazettes exonerating Parsons.^ 

If the offenses taken cognizance of by the county com- 
mittees had been limited to those set forth in the Conti- 
nental Association, little more could be said in criticism of 

* Virginia Gazette, August 26, 1775. 

« Ibid.. August 22, 1775. ' Ibid., June 19, 1775. 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 105 

these bodies than that they discharged their duties some- 
what over-zealously. Even this criticism would have to 
be qualified, for revolution by its very nature cannot toler- 
ate differences of opinion: it means the victory of a part 
of the population over another part — a triumph of or- 
ganization no less than of arms. The local committees in 
Virginia, as well as in other colonies where political dis- 
sent was potentially dangerous from a military point of 
view, were driven to suppress loyalist opinion. Commit- 
tees summoned offenders for intemperate speeches and 
punished them as ruthlessly as for actual violations of the 
Association, which in time came to be regarded as a law 
rather than a boycott. Examinations of persons for po- 
litical opinions occurred in all parts of the colony, proving 
that there were everywhere people attached to Great Brit- 
ain. Social position and wealth — in all other ways a very 
great power in Virginia — failed usually to protect such of- 
fenders, who long before the Declaration of Independence 
were regarded as traitors. The first test of Revolutionary 
politics hinges on the Continental Association. It was not 
enough to obey that promulgation; strict patriotism de- 
manded a willingness to sign it and the use of respectful 
language regarding its often vexatious demands. Austin 
Brockenbrough, who hastily put his name to the Associa- 
tion and afterwards repented at leisure, was summoned for 
the offense of attempting to prejudice people against it. 
Losing his temper, he defied the committee and was or- 
dered to appear before it next court day. When he failed 
to come, he was published as an enemy. '^ In Middlesex, 
Thomas Haddon was advertised as "inimical "for refusing 
^ American Archives, i, 337. 



106 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

to sign the Association and casting reflections on it.^ John 
Saunders, a law student, who was either aloof in spirit 
or a victim of a legal conscience, refused to sign patriotic 
resolutions drawn up by the Princess Anne meeting of 
July, 1774, called to choose delegates to the August con- 
vention. Later, when the Virginia Association was read 
to the people, he again refused to conform. As a last test, 
the Continental Association was tendered him, and this 
he likewise declined, alleging "that the way of procedure 
was illegal." This led the county committee to appoint a 
delegation to wait on Saunders and urge him to retract his 
statement: on account of his youth, the committee averred, 
it "desired to deal gently with him." Asked if his words 
had not been inadvertently spoken, he replied that they 
had not. A friend then persuaded the obstinate loyalist to 
put his name to the Association, but he immediately added 
a big "No"; and the committee, worn out, branded him 
as a public enemy. Benjamin Dingly Gray, another non- 
associator, and Mitchell Phillips, a militia captain who 
had exerted his influence to prevent men from signing the 
Association, shared his fate.^ Allan Love, brought before 
the Brunswick Committee on the charge of "uttering in- 
jurious and reproachful expressions," was acquitted. The 
Pittsylvania Committee, in May, 1776, summoned one 
John Pigg before it on the complaint that he had drunk 
tea and exclaimed against the measures of Congress. Pigg 
did not come and was declared "a traitor to his country 
and inimical to American liberty."^ 
The clergy of the Anglican establishment generally sym- 

* American Archives, i, 668. ^ ibid., i, 76. 

• Virginia Gazette, June 1, 1775. 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 107 

pathized with the colonists, but were vexed somewhat 
by dread of rebeUion against the head of the Church. 
Occasionally they came into conflict with Revolutionary 
sentiment. The most noted case was that of John Agnew, 
minister of; Suffolk Parish, Nansemond, who treated his 
congregation to a sermon from that text so dear to consti- 
tuted authority, "Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's." ^ He was expelled in consequence by his pa- 
rishioners, who doubtless remembered that Caesar had his 
Brutus — and very properly, according to Patrick Henry. 
The Nansemond Committee published Agnew as "inim- 
ical" and his conduct was judged so serious as to be re- 
ferred to the Committee of Safety, which ordered him to 
provide security for his good behavior. Not being able to 
do this in any other way, the minister offered to turn over 
his land and slaves, an offer the committee accepted with a 
benediction: "Tis hoped all remembrance of his former 
conduct be forgotten, and that his future will be such as 
to recommend him to y^ enjoyment of peace and harmony 
with the society." Somewhat different was the case of 
John Wingate, an Orange minister, who suffered from a 
tyrannical use of the inquisitorial power of the county com- 
mittee. Wingate had in his possession certain pamphlets 
reflecting on Congress, which the committee, "desirous to 
manifest their contempt and resentment of such writings 
and their authors," requested him to surrender. He refused 
on the ground that the pamphlets did not belong to him. 
The committee promised to make good the loss to the 
owner and burned them.^ 

1 Virginia Gazette, March 25, 1776, and J. B. Dunn's History of Nanse- 
mond County. 2 Virginia Gazette, April 15, 1775. 



108 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Passing beyond expressions of opinion, committees at- 
tempted to regulate the lives of people to an extraordinary- 
degree, and even went to the point of trying to enforce lit- 
erally the article of the Association forbidding gambling. 
What is stranger still, a community given up to horse- 
racing and passionately devoted to card-playing, actually 
endured this puritanical interference in private affairs. 
Committees published a number of men for gambling, but 
inclined graciously to pardon those who expressed contri- 
tion. The committees not only regulated the opinions of 
their respective counties, but cooperated with other bodies 
in cases involving several jurisdictions. Such cooperation 
was made necessary by the absence in the spring and sum- 
mer of 1775 of any regularly constituted officials with 
general powers; the local committees were the only act- 
ing official bodies. By mutual understanding committees 
confined themselves strictly to their own territories and 
carefully observed the rights of other localities. The Nor- 
folk Committee, in May, 1775, communicated to the 
Prince George Committee the facts in the case of James 
Marsden, charged with bringing in a puncheon of linen 
after the expiration of the time allowed for importation and 
with furnishing ship-captain Fazakerly with pork by order 
of Captain Charles Alexander. The last-named person ap- 
peared before the Prince George Committee and apologized 
for his conduct. He confessed he had brought in the linen 
and pork inadvertently, claiming he had given the order 
on Marsden to pay Fazakerly conditionally on the con- 
vention's consent to the exportation of food. This exami- 
nation was sent to the Norfolk Committee, which referred 
the case back to Prince George on jurisdictional grounds. 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 109 

The Prince George Committee then decided that Alexander 
had violated the Association and declared him an enemy. ^ 
In the same way the Essex organization, in April, 1776, 
considered a case of importation that had already been 
tried by the Gloucester Committee, and, accepting the 
latter's verdict, published the offenders, John and George 
Fowler, as enemies of America. ^ 

Local committees in December, 1774, and the early part 
of 1775, acted wholly on their own responsibility, with no 
other guide or authority than the Continental Association. 
The king's governor still lived in his official residence in 
Williamsburg and still went through the form of conduct- 
ing the administration with the aid of his council. The 
assembly, which alone could have directed the committees, 
had not sat for some time and Dunmore showed no hurry 
to summon it. Apparently he shared the view of James II 
that revolutions can be impeded by legal obstacles. James 
II had thrown the Great Seal into the Thames : Dunmore 
refused to call the assembly. The county committees con- 
sequently enjoyed unlimited authority in their districts. 
Dunmore, much alarmed, wrote to Lord Dartmouth that 
the committees overhauled merchants' accounts and even 
went so far as to swear the men of the independent mili- 
tary companies to take all orders from them. The Norfolk 
Committee, in May, 1775, published an indignant denial 
of the charge of inquisition, but Dunmore had told nothing 
but the truth. The committees did take it upon themselves 
to investigate everything and they were backed by armed 
force. The militia system, fallen into decay since the French- 
and-Indian War, was replaced by volunteer companies of 
» Virginia Gazette, October 28, 1775. 2 Ibid.. June 14, 1776. 



110 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

minute-men, the first of which seems to have been raised 
in Prince Wilham. Several of them were organized before 
the end of 1774, and by the summer of 1775 thirty or more 
existed.'' This force was in complete sympathy with the 
local committees and if necessary would have used arms 
in their support: a number of these companies mustered 
to march to Williamsburg at the time of Dunmore's theft 
of the powder. Modeled on the old militia system, the 
minute-men no more disturbed the sedate character typi- 
cal of the Revolution in Virginia than did the committees 
composed of justices and other unmelodramatic revolu- 
tionists. 

It has been observed that the county and borough com- 
mittees in their first months of activity worked as entirely 
independent bodies, though with a harmonious purpose. 
The convention of March, 1775, took the first step towards 
the formation of a new government by recommending the 
adoption of a military organization based on the unob- 
served militia law of 1738.^ It also somewhat hastened the 
crisis by practically closing the courts; but the colony con- 
tinued under the rule of committees until August 17, 1775, 
when the convention elected a Revolutionary executive, 
the Committee of Safety. This body, under the powers 
granted by the convention and assumed by itself, became 
the central authority, occupying much the same place for 
the whole colony that the committees did for the coun- 
ties. It gave orders to committees and armed forces and 
settled questions that were referred to it from the local 
bodies. The latter were glad to shift responsibility to a 
higher tribunal and rendered implicit obedience to its de- 
1 Lingley, 106-07. 2 Ibid.. 129. 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 111 

cisions. Under the control of the Committee of Safety, 
the county committees grew even more pertinacious and 
effective in rooting out and suppressing disaffection and 
still more drastic in their methods. Sternness was prob- 
ably inevitable. The actual break with England had come 
and was attended by a sudden change in the attitude of 
many people, who were zealous enough in opposing Par- 
liamentary taxation, but shrank from a military struggle. 
The convention, by a necessary war measure, now of- 
fended this element. The trading interest in Virginia cen- 
tered largely at Norfolk, Hampton, and Suffolk. Hitherto 
it had patiently and loyally borne the hardships of non- 
importation, partly solaced by the privilege of exporting 
Virginia products to British markets. The merchants, 
mostly Scotchmen, at first displayed genuine sympathy 
for the American cause, and the Norfolk Committee was 
behind none in activity in enforcing the Association. But 
when war actually broke out in 1775 the views of many of 
these men changed. While believing that the colonies had 
grievances, they preferred to swallow them rather than 
to come into open conflict with Great Britain. To add 
further to their embarrassment, the convention, on July 
24, 1775, struck a heavy blow at commerce. By the terms 
of the Continental Association exportation to Great 
Britain and her dependencies was to cease on September 
10, 1775, unless the British government acceded to colonial 
demands. The Virginia merchants, with this limit in view, 
had made extensive contracts for products, chiefly provi- 
sions. To their consternation the convention ordered that 
no provisions be sent out of the colony after August 5, 1775, 
that no quantities of necessaries be stored in towns near 



112 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

navigable waters, and that all contracts for exportation be 
considered null and void. The local committees were com- 
missioned to carry this order into effect.^ 

In view of the fact that war had begun and battles were 
being fought in the North, this procedure was eminently- 
wise. It was rank folly to supply the enemy with food or 
to store it in quantity within easy reach of his cruisers. 
At the same time the prohibition put a quietus on the 
colony's expiring trade and moved the Norfolk merchants 
to protest. Their petition, which was read in convention 
on August 1, 1775, recited their extensive contracts with 
planters for grain and the number of foreign ships chartered 
to carry it — all based on the limit, September 10, 1775, ex- 
pressly set forth in the Continental Association. The con- 
vention, in stopping exportation, had acted with great haste, 
and "without allowing time or opportunity for the trading 
interest of the colony to know that such a measure was 
in agitation, much less to lay their objections before this 
Convention." Large quantities of grain and provisions 
would be thrown on their hands and their vessels, on arrival, 
must remain idle. Furthermore, the embargo gave a trade 
advantage to other colonies which had not stopped expor- 
tation. The appeal ended with these frank words: "If 
provincial Conventions undertake the regulation of con- 
tinental concerns and that during a Session of the Congress 
itself, the only choice we have left us is to lament the vio- 
lation of public faith and order, and flattered as we have 
been into deceitful expectations, to sit down the melan- 
choly spectators of our own destruction." ^ Twenty-eight 

1 Journal of the July Convention of 1775, 6. 

2 Legislative Petitions. Norfolk (BllSG). 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 113 

firms signed this document, and it doubtless expressed the 
sentiments of others too cautious to sign. In addition to 
this, the committee of Norfolk Borough instructed those of 
its members who were also delegates in the convention to 
secure a reconsideration of the prohibitory resolution. The 
committee, arguing that the prohibition allowed no time for 
business adjustment, warned the convention that it was 
"under some apprehension that so cheerful an obedience 
will not be paid to this distressing injunction, as our con- 
stituents are ever desirous to pay to all the decisions of 
that honorable body; and that we humbly request that the 
said Resolution will be repeald, at least so far as to give 
time for vessels that are now loading to take in their 
cargoes." ^ The convention sternly rebuked the petition- 
ers. It declared that the merchants' petition reflected on 
the convention and tended to destroy the confidence of 
the people of the colony in their representatives; that the 
resolution had not been passed in haste, and that the mer- 
chants of Norfolk and Portsmouth could not expect meas- 
ures of vital concern to the colony to be suspended until 
they had been consulted. 

The committee of Northampton County had also pleaded 
against the stoppage of imports, although its language was 
less expostulatory and it limited its requests to a modi- 
fication of the resolution. The Northampton people, ac- 
cording to the committee, had made contracts to deliver 
large quantities of maize, and reasonably wished exporta- 
tion to the West Indies to continue.^ This petition and that 
of the Norfolk Committee, in contradistinction to that of 

' Miscellaneous Papers of the Committee of Safety and the Convention of 
1775. 2 Legislative Petitions. Northampton (B4853). 



114 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the merchants, were approved as "decent and respectful," 
and, in deference to them, the convention allowed exporta- 
tion of maize of the last year's crop to continue until Sep- 
tember 10, provided security was given the county com- 
mittees not to ship the grain north. ^ 

This dispute, apparently disposed of by the convention, 
marks the beginning of the detachment of the mercantile 
interest from the colonial cause. For the remainder of the 
Revolution the Norfolk region never showed anything of 
its early patriotism and spirit of cooperation with the rest 
of the colony. It was a defection that might have been 
fraught with serious consequences but for the incompe- 
tence and tactlessness of the man in whose hands fate had 
placed the charge of British authority. 

Through the early part of the Revolution the convention 
exercised supreme power. When not in session it was rep- 
resented by the Committee of Safety, which acted as the 
executive. Among the latter 's functions was that of court 
of appeals for the county committees, though the conven- 
tion remained as a kind of final tribunal in exceptional 
cases. Spurred on by the Committee of Safety, the county 
committees worked with even greater vigor and eflSciency 
than before. With the beginning of war the inquisitorial 
methods necessarily became more severe in the passage 
from the economic to the military stage of resistance, and 
disaffection was suppressed by law in place of merely being 
banned by public opinion. In the lower counties especially, 
the danger of Dunmore's presence led the committees to 
employ means that at other times would have seemed 
unworthy. Not only were speeches of disaffected persons 
1 Journal of the July Convention of 1776, 10. 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 115 

regarded as sufficient grounds for trial, but mails were 
tampered with in the search for evidence. Walter Hatton, 
of Accomac, was brought before the county committee for 
writing a seditious letter, and, at his own request, was sent 
on to the Committee of Safety for examination. On his 
tendering an apology for the letter, the committee dropped 
the case against him.^ In this letter Hatton had made the 
following statement: — 

It is now, and has been for some time past, an established rule 
to break open all letters either going from or directed to any offi- 
cer in the service of the Crown. It was with difficulty, I will assure 
you, that now I am able to transmit them, as my going from 
Accomac to this place [Norfolk] was opposed by upwards of 300 
people of the county, who will not allow any vessel to come to 
this place, for fear of supplying the ships of war, and other troops, 
with provision; and I will assure you, that I am doubtful whether 
I may not be obliged to take a shelter on some of the ships, or at 
least on this side the bay, during the confused usurpation of 
power that an officer of the customs, if only he acts with spirit, 
or as his duty and oath bind him, that he will immediately fall 
under the lash of the damn'd committees, et cet., who on such 
occasions will show them as little mercy as they themselves may 
expect in the future world. 

The Caroline Committee seized suspected letters sent 
from Port Royal, ^ and the Nansemond Committee, not 
even sparing women, summoned Betsey Hunter, on Novem- 
ber 22, 1775, to answer the charge of having written letters 
to her brother in Norfolk informing him of military prep- 
arations at Suffolk and Smithfield. The woman denied that 
she had intended to give intelligence, but the committee 
decided otherwise and published her, along with Mary and 

1 Virginia Gazette, February 26, 1776. ^ Ibid., March 1, 1776. 



116 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Martha Wilkinson, who were privy to the letters, as "ene- 
mies to America." The Accomac Committee tried Captain 
Custis Kellam for using improper language concerning the 
people of Boston, but let him off on his apologizing.^ So 
close was the scrutiny to which everybody was subjected 
and so injurious the suspicion of disaffection, that we find 
one Watkins, of Halifax, publishing a statement in the 
newspapers that he had gone on board Dunmore's ship 
solely on private business and had resisted the governor's 
efforts to seduce him from the patriot cause. ^ Such an in- 
cident was sufficiently absurd, but surely the climax of rev- 
olutionary effervescence was reached in the case of Richard 
Harrison, of Petersburg, who was haled before his commit- 
tee for the high crime and misdemeanor of feasting bounti- 
fully on May 17, 1776, which had been proclaimed a solemn 
fast day. Harrison expressed his regret and declared he had 
forgotten it was a fast : he, and five others who had dined 
with him, were thereupon forgiven.^ 

Towards the end of 1775 and in the early months of 
1776, the committees along the Chesapeake shore in the 
neighborhood of Hampton attempted to blockade Norfolk 
and adopted measures strangely like those used by local 
committees in the French Revolution. Persons going to 
and from Norfolk were required to show passes, failing 
which they were liable to be locked up in jail or sent to 
Williamsburg as suspected loyalists. Passports were re- 
quired of all travelers through the tidewater region. "It 
is not now possible," wrote an Englishman from Ports- 
mouth, on November 10, 1775, "for any of our Country 

1 Virginia Gazette, March 1, 1776. « Ibid., March 22, 1776. 

8 Ibid.. June 7, 1776. 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 117 

men to travel the country, without a pass from the Com- 
mittees or Commanding oflScers, which none of them can 
procure." ^ Another Tory tells of a trip he made to Hamp- 
ton, where he was kept a prisoner by the local committee 
all night and examined in the morning. 

The punishment of holding convicted loyalists up to pub- 
lic condemnation in the gazettes, at one time exceedingly 
efficient, was superseded in December, 1775, by an ordi- 
nance of convention "establishing a mode of punishment 
for the enemies of America in this colony." ^ This ordi- 
nance provided that all white men who had been in arms 
against the colony and failed to surrender themselves in 
two months, or any who might thereafter assist the enemy, 
should be imprisoned at the discretion of the Committee of 
Safety, which was also empowered to seize their estates and 
apply the income to the public service. Slaves taken in 
arms against the colony or voluntarily attending the enemy 
were threatened with the dire punishment of being sold in 
the West Indies, or otherwise disposed of for the benefit 
of the colony. The Continental Association was continued 
in force and strengthened by a clause forfeiting imported 
goods and the ships employed. An admiralty court of 
three judges was established to carry these forfeitures into 
effect; and the Committee of Safety received directions to 
name five members of each local committee as commis- 
sioners to conduct jury trials of offenders against the 
Association. The Committee of Safety constituted the 
appellate court, and further was given the pardoning 
power. 

In May, 1776, the convention increased the penalties 
» Miscellaneous Papers, 1776-1776. » Hening's Statutes, ix, 101. 



118 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

for Toryism to forfeiture of estate and indefinite imprison- 
ment, although a part of the sequestrated property was to 
be applied to the support of the families of the owners.^ 
The convention also adopted, on May 27, 1776, a test oath 
to be offered by local committees to all suspects. This oath 
bound the subscriber to aid the government of Virginia in 
the war, not to assist the enemy in any way, and to reveal 
conspiracies and plots. Refusal to take this oath was 
punished by seizure of arms and ammunition. ^ Following 
the establishment of the test, the Halifax Committee, on 
June 20, 1776, offered the oath to six men, who refused to 
take it and were waited on for their arms.^ A number of 
Fredericksburg merchants and other disaffected persons 
were ordered disarmed at the same time.^ In Northumber- 
land several men rejected the oath and suffered disarma- 
ment,^ and in Pittsylvania seven or eight persons declined 
the test. The Caroline Committee offered the oath to James 
Miller and a dozen other suspects, who refused and were 
advertised as inimical. 

There is no doubt [the committee said] but these monsters of 
ingratitude will be pleased with this notification of their attach- 
ment to the jurisdiction of Great Britain, serving to recommend 
them as fit instruments to enslave their American benefactors; 
and consequently proper objects of royal munificence; a large 
portion of which, perhaps, will fall to the man whose name stands 
foremost in this black list, as a reward for his disapprobation 
of and opposition to publick measures, sufficiently manifest, we 
think, in his refusing to qualify as a justice of the peace, in not 
complying with a requisition of Convention to contribute to the 

1 Henhufs Skilutes, rx, 130. 

> Journal of the May Convention of 1776, 26. 

» Vinjinia CuizcUc, July 5, 1776. 

* Ihid., August 23, 1776. « Ibid., September 27, 1776. 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 119 

purchase of arms and ammunition, and in not voting at elections 
of delegates and committees. i 

This bitter arraignment shows how the irritation of pa- 
triots against the disaffected was growing with the prog- 
ress of the war. The man who heads the "black list" is 
denounced for refusing to accept office, failing to contribute 
to the fund for supplies, and absenting himself from elec- 
tions. No overt act of any sort is charged against him. At 
Falmouth the King George Committee disarmed a few 
non- jurors. 

So much for examples. The same process must have been 
repeated in nearly every trading community in Virginia, 
although the records have not come down to us. In each 
case a little group of men, suspected of lukewarmness or 
hostility towards the patriot cause, but usually not asser- 
tive in expressing opinions, was brought to the surface as 
"inimical" by the net of the test oath. Few open enemies 
of the Revolution remained in Virginia after the spring of 
1776. Most of them had left in 1775, despairing of the royal 
cause or fearing to be involved in the struggle; the gazettes 
of that year are full of the " I-intend-for-England " of 
merchants appealing for the settlement of debts. Later, in 
1776, when the patriot party passed from suppression of 
disaffection to refusal to tolerate dissent, the remainder of 
the trading class went into exile. A few who persisted in 
lingering were forcibly expelled. 

The merchants and planters of British sympathies who 

left Virginia in 1775 and 1776 probably may be counted 

by hundreds. They were men of character and property, 

and in many instances of considerable education, and 

' Virginia Gazette, December 6, 1776. 



120 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

altogether formed the most energetic element in the colony. 
Their loss was irrei)iirable; and it was many years before 
Virginia again possessed an active and enterprising com- 
mercial class. This was part of the price j)aid for the 
Revolution and was inevitable. In a revolutionary state 
no room existed for serious difference of political opinion; 
there was the alternative of submission or exile. The com- 
mercial Tories, scattered far and wide through an agrarian 
population, remained helpless in the face of the patriot 
majority; in Norfolk alone they dared strike a blow for the 
king. If there had been towns of any size in Virginia, with 
royal forces to occupy them, or if there had been at Nor- 
folk a fifth part of the army Howe wasted in idleness at 
Boston in the winter of 1775-7C, the history of the Revo- 
lution in Virginia and of the Revolution in general might 
have been different. But the home government, apparently 
interested only in the Boston situation, allowed its parti- 
sans in Virginia to be crushed or driven into exile with- 
out an effort to defend them, thus enabling the planters 
thoroughly to organize the colony for the Revolution and 
to render the most essential aid to the insurgent army in 
the North. Arnold, with a small command, did incalculable 
damage in Virginia in 1781 ; and Cornwallis, in his invasion, 
seriously, if ephemerally, affected the sentiment of eastern 
Virginia. Two or three regiments under a capable ofBcer 
might have accomplished far more in the closing days of 
1775, when the large latent opposition to the Revolution 
would have grown into a Tory party if the king had shown 
his ability to i)rotect his own. In the absence of protection, 
the disaffected were forced either to leave Virginia or to 
become lukewarm revolutionists, giving a perfunctory sup- 



THE COUNTY COMMITTEES 121 

port to the patriot cause. The patriot party, composed of 
the great majority of planters and the piedmont and west- 
ern farmers and hunters and led by men trained in admin- 
istration, allowed the loyalists no chanee to eoiicontratc 
at any point. The means employed to accomplish this 
end were the local conunittees, which exercised an almost 
despotic power from December, 1774, to the summer of 
177C. They acted with an intelligence and thoroughness 
that modern political organization cannot surpass, and 
they succeeded so well in their task that surface observers 
are tempted to believe that in Virginia alone of the colonies 
British sentiment hardly existed. This is a mistake. The 
truth is that the committees did not allow British senti- 
ment a chance to develop, and hardly even to exist. ^ 

It will be observed from the foregoing account that the 
Revolution was hardly a popular movement in its incep- 
tion. The body of the people were not greatly aroused, 
when, in the last weeks of 1774, the committees began their 
work of enforcing the observance of the Continental Asso- 
ciation. That boycott was distinctly the weapon of the 
planters, and the cooperation of the other classes of the 
community in the regulating proceedings of the commit- 
tees was secondary. 

The poor people of eastern Virginia — small farmers and 
others — began to take fire in the spring of 1775 as the 
result of Patrick Henry's activities. To them, unlike the 
planter class, the Revolution meant something more than 
resistance to England; it awakened feelings of antagonism 
to the order of society itself — feelings which have always 

1 One committee journal, that of Cumberland, is extant, though muti- 
lated, in the Virginia State Library. 



122 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

existed among men, but which largely remained inarticulate 
until the coming of the French pliilosophers of the eight- 
eenth century. The poor in Virginia usually enjoyed a fair 
abundance of food, but they were housed in hovels and 
were utterly illiterate and to ajarge extent sunk in bru- 
tal dissipation. With resistance to the authority of England 
in progress and with the new French idea of equality in the 
air, it is not surprising that the poorer classes began to hope 
for a rise in their condition and a larger share in the govern- 
ment. Their participation in the Revolution marks the end 
of the first act in the great revolt, which had been distin- 
guished by the labors of the committees directed wholly 
to the conservative end of abating British encroachments 
on colonial liberty. 



CHAPTER V 

CONVENTION AND COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 

The convention which met in July, 1775, found itself 
faced by the necessity of raising troops and preparing for 
war. 13y this time many companies of minute-men existed 
in Virginia, but the militia expected to serve only in emer- 
gencies. To meet the need of a permanent force, the con- 
vention passed an ordinance for raising two regiments of 
regulars and a number of companies of riflemen for border 
defense. There was no money in the Virginia treasury, 
however, and regular taxation was in abeyance during the 
Revolutionary crisis. An untrained assembly might have 
hesitated in finding ways and means, but this convention 
of experienced legislators went on to assert its sovereignty 
by laying a special levy. Carriages, tithables, land, ordi- 
nary licenses, marriage licenses, and legal writs were taxed 
to provide the money for arming, equipping, and paying the 
troops and paying the delegates in the Continental Con- 
gress. As some time must elapse before such taxes would 
come in, while money was immediately needed, the con- 
vention voted an issue of £350,000 of treasury notes. These 
were secured in the first place by the special taxes and 
finally by the whole property of the colony solemnly 
pledged by the convention. 

The keynote of Revolutionary finance was thus struck at 
the beginning. The first paper money commanded a good 
exchange value for some time, but subsequent issues caused 



124 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

rapid depreciation until the nadir was reached in 1782, 
when Virginia paper was worth about one to one thousand 
in specie. The English government, probably with wisdom, 
had opposed colonial paper money, and this issue of 1775 
is one of the evidences of open revolution. 

The convention met the need for an executive when, 
on August 17, 1775, it elected a Committee of Safety, 
endowed with considerable powers. The break with the 
colonial regime was now complete, for the royal governor, 
regarded up to this time as head of the state, gave way to 
another and frankly revolutionary executive. The conven- 
tion itself was only the House of Burgesses acting in an un- 
precedented capacity, but the administrative junta called 
into being had no association with the past. It was born 
of a necessity completely beyond the scope of constitu- 
tional limitations. 

The Committee of Safety, in its political complexion, 
represented the conservative wing of the patriot party as 
against the progressives led by Henry and Jefferson. As 
has been stated before, the use of party appellatives in 
describing the factions existing in Virginia before the rise 
of definite political organizations is not entirely accurate, 
but genuine divergencies require the employment of names. 
In the convention of July, 1775, conservatives and progres- 
sives were in strong conflict, — the one side pressing for 
sweeping measures and open war, the other endeavoring to 
stave off the inevitable struggle to the last moment. The 
revolutionary party, which was about equal in strength to 
its opponents, put forward Patrick Henry for colonel of the 
First Virginia Regiment, and, as such, ranking officer of the 
Virginia forces. Although Hugh Mercer, afterwards killed 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 125 

at Princeton, led him on the first ballot, Henry's friends 
managed to elect him; but his antagonists, foiled in their 
effort to prevent his election, consistently hampered his 
action through the administrative power of the Committee 
of Safety. 

This body without exception was composed of men of 
substance and position. Six members came from the tide- 
water counties, three from the south side, one from the 
piedmont, and one from the west. A glance thus shows 
that the preponderant eastern element secured the success 
of its policies by electing a majority of the committee from 
its own ranks. Seven of the eleven members, I'cndlcton, 
Bland, John Page, Paul Carrington, Dudley Digges, 
Carter Braxton, and John Tabb, may be classed as con- 
servatives, leaving as progressive representatives George 
Mason, Thomas Ludwell Lee, William Cabell, and James 
Mercer. Mason, probably the foremost member in point 
of ability, seldom attended meetings and the direction of 
affairs fell into the hands of Edmund Pendleton, the con- 
servative leader. Bland, who might have disputed the 
primacy with him, was old and in declining health. Pendle- 
ton, as both president of the convention and chairman of 
the Committee of Safety, occui)ied a imique position. 
With Jefferson, Henry, and Richard Henry Lee out of Vir- 
ginia politics for the time being, he was the most influential 
man in the government. Because of his ascendancy, the 
Williamsburg administration held off from war long after 
hostilities had begun elsewhere; they still hoped against 
hope for a reconciliation with England. Such an event 
woukl have been welcome to Pendleton provided it could 
be had on terms honorable to America. As this could not 



VH) TUK REVOLUTION IN VIIKJINIA 

Im*. Iir hrnvcly pl.'iycd liispnri in I In* UcvoliilioM. I'ciidlrlon 
is 11. li^MiiT ill nijiiiy wjiys rcscnihliii;^ I )isr.u'li. Like Dis- 
raeli Ik' liii<l l(» m.ikc liis \v;iy fioiii oKsciin' Ix'/'iimiii^js; like 
Disnu'Ii Ik> brriiiiH' I lie jinlciil (IcfciKKr «»r \\\c ruling' cliiss 
wliicii JU'('<'pU*<l liiiii. Me WHS of line pn-sciict^ iiiul polished 
liiiiniicrs, nil nhic k'iAvy<M', an lioiioniMr iiiui ciipiiblt* piil>li«' 
iiinii. Il«' iK'licviMl in f^ovtMiiiiuMil by f^ifiilltMiUMi uiid Iiiul 
IK) syiMpjilliy for llic greni <l<Mii()cralic iiiovciiioiil which 
]|<Miry hiul lirsl I«>(1 mid which .IcIVcrsoii was hilcr lo ^iiidc 
(o a. liiighly (h'sliiiy . Ih'spcnl nnich of his can'cr in resist- 
ing allaeks on Ihe I'lninhlin^; social order <»!" lluM'oIonial 
ii>!;e and <li<'d at the threshold of (he nineteenth centnry 
jnsi as he wasalxmt to d<'li\<M' a, liiial blow in luhaH'ol" that 
most conservjilive ol' inslilnlions, the Anglican Cliun'h. 

'I'lie «-oii\<iilioii <ii!iiisl<>(l llu' Connniliee of Safety 
with [he powers needed |)\' a \ igorons exeeiit iv<' in lime of 
war. II was ,";i\ (Ml coiilrol of troops in liu> Held and the 
militia, and had authority to s<'cnre arms and ainninnilion 
whereviM' tln'y eonld he found. It mi';hl enter into ne>:;o- 
liali»»ns with other <'olonies for military snp|)ort and was 
lo»'arry on a eorrespoii<lciU'e with the \ arions ctmiity com- 
mit te<>s. This last-named thlly de\«Io|)ed into a general 
Niipervision of these committees. The <'on\ ciil ion imposed 
on loyalists the |uMiallies of impri,s«)iiment and sei/.ui*e of 
estates at the discri'lion of the Commit le<" of Safely. Serv- 
ice in the militia, was re»|nired of all al)l«> l»o*li<'d men of mil- 
itary age «'xc<'pl. Ilritons horn, who nii;';hl remain nenlral. 

Owing to the iiillii(>iie(« of Milnmnd rendleton. the (\)m- 
mitl<>c of Safely used its powers with cxInMiie cantion in 
|1m> Slimmer of 177.'>. To him Dnnmorc was still Ihe lawful 
goNtrnor. to he respected as such. Hesides taking no steps 



COMMITTEK OK SAKl/PY H7 

nf];;iins! nuniiion', (lie coimniHci' I;ir<t<'Iy left I In" l(\vnlisfs 
jiKnu' ill Sc'plcnilxM-, Oflohor, niul NovimmIhw, I??;"). It 
foiiiul iihuiulaiii (MiiploynuMil in orgniii/iiif^, 0(|ui|)|>itif^, niid 
fcodiii'^ I lie troops niisod hy llu' coiivciilioii ;iiul in f';«Mliiif; 
iiilo llic Held M j))irt of llic luililiii. 

I'lUHUvslioiiMhly llic Williiniislmrf^ juiilii <lispljiyc<l (mi- 
<M7>y iiiid iiit('lli;;tMi((«. I»ul it nlso nllowcd liiiH« for Duii- 
inorc lo^ol nMiifon-iMiuMils niul ro<Tuils Jiiid lt<';.';in lo ImrHss 
{he (.'licsjiponkt' slioirs. Tlu' coiimullrt' was l"oi-<'<>d at 
Ini^tli l>y l)iiiniion'*s d<»pivdalioiis on projuM-fy and arn'sls 
of paliiols lo niakt' a. tlrnioiislnilion; and. on OcIoIxt 'ii, 
177.'>, dtnidcd lo send troops lo Norfolk. Diinniorc iM<>an- 
timo worked <MHMf;<'li('alIy lo raise a force. Il<« liad ample 
leisure lo do lliis, for so slowly did llu> coittiiial Iroops move 
thai lliey nacJHMl lli«> vi<inily of Norfolk only ahoni 
J)<'eendKM- 1, 177.'); and if llie j^ov(M-nor luul not lak<Mi Ihe 
inilialive by attacking llie mililia id K«'mpsville and pro- 
elaimin;^ fre<'tlom lo slaA<\s, il is prohaMe llial lioslililies 
mi};!il liav*' been postponed for a eonsideraMy l(»n};'er pe- 
riod. In fad llie ('oinmittee of Safety, zealous as it was in 
purely adminislrali\'e work. i)referre<l to leave hirf?e <iueH- 
lions of policy to llie con^(•nlion; it probably felt that it 
possessed anomalous j>o\vers uliicli sliould not be assi'rted 
too vij!;orously. 

Wlieii the eonv<Milion mel. on l)e<'<>niber I, 177r>, u 
whole host of eomplaints and appeals awaited it ; a wide- 
sjuj^ad feeling existed that the <'onvenlion was tln'sole 
nuthorily able lo <leal with Ihe novel and eonfusin^^ eir- 
eumslances allcMdinj;; the overthrow of the oM iV'^ime und 
till* be^innin^^ of war. Thus the Aeeomae Commiltre on 
November JJO reported that the county <leIeKates could not 



128 TIIR REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

uIUmkI llir coMvcnlion for fi'ur of lu'Iiif^ (ukcii l)y ICiigllsh 
ships (Tiiisiiii^ ill <'li(\s;i|)<';ik<> U;\y nud <-oiii|)l;iiM('<I of llic 
exposed sihiulioii of llic M.-islcni Sliore und Llio ^t'liernl dis- 
iHcliiiJilioii of llic people for iiiililiu service: it Jisked for a 
detueliiiient of regulurs to take the phice of inilitiii for 
guard <iuty.' 'I'he Elizabeth (lity patriots stated, on De- 
cember ^y that some of the people of that county had 
boarded a. schooner aiui brought sii|)plies jishore from her, 
and llmt another vessel, l.-ulen with provisions, mi^ht have 
been taken if they had h;id "powder Jiiid (►rders." They 
accordingly re(inested direclions from the convention or 
Comniittec of Safety as to future action in rc<i;ard to 
seizing Rritish shi|)s/^ Wjirvvick complained that it could 
raise only one hundred militia, a force too small to protect 
the county from the enemy, who had already begun to 
ravage it: the committee asked for an jidditional forc(^ of 
125 men.^ War had evidently begiui and war mensures 
were necessary, among others the adoption of a tlefinite 
policy towards the Tories. County committees had merci- 
lessly supi)ressed these unfortunates by such means as iso- 
hited communities are able to emi)loy, but the w^ork of 
repression could no hmgcr 1)<> left to local bodies. Slill, lli<« 
C'onnnitte(^ of Safety had refiaincd, save in a few aggra- 
vated (rases, from using the license granted to it of hiipris- 
oning loyalists and taking possession of their estates. Under 
these circumstances action by the convention was neces- 
sary and unavoidable, (^itations of naines go to prove that 
in spite of the extreme disadvantages they were under there 

• IVlilions to llic ("oiivciilioii iiikI Comiiiillrc of Siifcly, Miircli to 
Uoci-iuluT, 1775. ••' LcKisliilivc- IVlilions. ICli/,ulu-lli Cily (AM38). 

• Ibid. Warwick. 



COMMJTTEK OK SAFICTY 129 

wore a Rood umtiy loyalists in Virf<iiiia, inrliKlln^ inrn of 
posilioii and iiidiK'ncc: if llicy Icid hcni shown lolcr.il ion 
llicir numbers would liav(^ incrc,'i.s(>(l willi every reverse of 
tlie Ameriean aruis until a genuine p.'irly iiiijjlit have eoiiK' 
into existence. 

The chief men of Tory inclinations in Virj^inia, were John 
l{.an<lolpli, altorney -genera! of the colony niid faiher of 
l*]dnnnid llandolpli, Secrelary of States in Washin^lon's 
('al)inet, who resigned liis odice and w<;nt to lOngland; Wil- 
liam IJyrd, of Wcatovcr, perhaps tlu^ first geiitlenuiri of Vir- 
ginia, colonel of a regimetd. in the Kr<'nch-a,nd-ln<liari War 
and memher of the conncil, who was approached in regard 
to accepting a, c(Uinnand in the Kevohitionary army, hut 
refuse<l to enlcrtain the od'er and retnained <(ui<'tly a1, his 
fine estate of "Westover" until his death in 1777; Ralph 
Wormcley, memher of the eouncnl and of one of lh<« most 
prominent colonial fanulics; Richard Corhin, receiv<'r- 
general of Virginia, and his sons, Francis and 'Gliomas; 
Hcverend John Agnew, of Sidfolk, who hecame <'ha|)lain of 
th<'()n<'en's Rangers and finally settled in N<'W llrnnswick; 
Ileverend Jonathan Rouc'Iicr, rector of Hanover and later 
of St. Mai'y's Parish; Rryan Fairfax, of Alexandria, who at- 
tendiMl and witlulrew from the Fairfax meeting of July IK, 
1774, where a county comtnittee was appointed and strong 
resolutions wen« adopted; Lord Thomas l^'airfax, tlur fri<'nd 
of Washington and one of llu^ v<'ry few nol)lem<'n residing 
in America, the owner of a vast estate in west<Tn Virginia 
on which Ik; contimied to live undisturbed all through th(5 
Revolution; R(;verend John (yamm, presid(!id of WilliaTu 
and Mary (college and commissary, who (M)nunillc(l no 
overt act and went unmolested; Andrew Sprowh-, of Nor- 



130 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

folk, tlio leading incrchant In Virginia, who died in exile in 
177(); Archibald Hilehie, of MidtUesex, father of the noted 
editor; rhilip Jlootes, of "Rosewall"; Jacob Ellegood, 
held as a prisoner and rej)eatedly asked for in exchange by 
the IJrilish; Matthew J*hrij)i), of Norfolk, merchant; John 
Tayloe Corbin, a large landowner's son; and John Crynies, 
another prominent planter. Many men of less importance 
shared their opinions and usually suffered a harder fate. 

Not only were the loyalists a menace by reason of their 
numbers and i)rominence. but Dunmore, through his dep- 
redations and finally by his j)roclamation of martial law, 
forced the i)rovincial government to proceed vigorously 
against them as his adherents. After considering Dunmorc's 
proclanuition, the convention, on December 13, 1775, is- 
sued a counter-declaration framed in the style of Jeffer- 
sonian rhetoric. Dunmorc's tyranny is arraigned and Vir- 
ginians are exhorted to shoM^ zeal in resisting it. The 
people of Nt)rfolk receive warning not to be led by the 
governor into op])osing the colony, although the conven- 
tion admits the i)ractical difficulty of refusing his demands. 
But neutrality is the least that can be accepted. "If any 
of our i)eople, in violation of their faith i)lighted to this 
coK)ny, and the duty they owe to society, shall be found 
in arms, or continue to give assistance to our enemies, we 
shall think ourselves justified, by the necessity we are 
under, of executing upon them the law of retaliation." ^ 
On the next day the convention directed Woodford to send 
to Williamsburg Tories taken in arms against the colony, 
and, i)ending orders from the convention or Conunittee of 
Safely, to detain other i)ersons appearing unfriendly. The 
* Journal of llic Cojiventioti of December, 1775, 64. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY VM 

convention further proclaimed the death penalty for slaves 
engaged in conspiracy or rebellion, and other i)unislnn(Mits 
for slaves sedu<'ed iiilo j()iniii/^ Dimmore by his itivil.alioi), 
but ()flVr(>d piinlon to those who had already taken anus 
and were willing; lo surrender themselves. "^ It also enlcred 
on Ihe task of considering the cases of individual loyalisls. 
There was actual treason as well as disall'ection. Deposi- 
tions made concerning John Dew, a shipmaster, recently 
arrt\sted in the Rai)i)ahaiuioek Iliver, showed that he had 
attempted to corrupt a j)atriot force at PVedericksburg by 
picturing the sujHM-ior comforts enjoyed by troops in the 
British service. "'I'hc King," he said, "foiuid his soldiers 
four new shirts & a good suit of cloaths, paid for their 
washing, & 3/0 shillings ])cr week (hiy, free Quarters & 
advised them to goe to the (lovernor." ^ 

On December 10, 1775, the convention reapi)ointed Ihe 
ConnniLlee of Safety, with two chiinges, Joseph Jones and 
Thomas Walker replacing (icorgc Mason aii<l ('arter iJrax- 
ton. Though the vote for him fell olf greatly, Edmund 
Pendleton remained the head of the cojmnittee. At the 
same time the convention heard Dr. Archibald ('amj)bell, 
of Norfolk, who complained that he had been charged 
with aiding Dunmore against the colony, but had done 
nothing except under compulsion. The convention re- 
ferred his i)etition to a sjx'cial conmiittec and ordered him 
bac'k to his room in Williamsburg under guard. A few 
days lal(T Woodford sent lo the convention three other sus- 
pected loyalists, Matthew l'hri])p, Etlward Hack Moscley, 

> Journal of the V.onvndion of Ihrrmhtr. 177 f,, (Jfl. 

* IVlilions lo liic Convciilion uud Cuiimiillcc of Sufcly, Marcli lo 
December, 1775. 



132 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

and the hitter's son: they were ordered into eonfinement 
waiting exiiiiiiiuition. The Curohiie ('onniiiLtee re])()rted 
that it liJid seized the effeets of another Norfolk Tory, 
Thomas IIej)l)urn, then in arms against the coh)ny. Yet, 
in s})itc of the widcsj)read disaffection in the Norfolk dis- 
trict and the number of Tories sent to WiUiamsburg for 
trial, the convention acted with commendable modera- 
tion. While county connnittces crushed liritish synii)a- 
thizers without mercy, the convention, like the Connnif tee 
of Safety, proceeded cautiously in in(lictin<;' severe i)unish- 
mcnts. As has been stated, the greater number of irrec- 
oncilable royalists left Virginia before the end of 1775, 
but a part of this non-native mercantile class was willing 
neither to submit quietly to the Revolution nor to go into 
exile; they were hostile to the patriot party and openly in 
sympathy with Dunmore. Some of these men had gone 
further at Norfolk in the king's behalf than could be easily 
explained on the ground of constraint; and the convention, 
in view of this fact, withdrew the consent granted by the 
July Convention for British-born residents to remain neu- 
tral. It charged them with violating the Continental Asso- 
ciation, giving intelligeu{;e to the enemy and furnishing 
him with provisions, propagating falsehoods injurious to the 
patriot cause, inciting slaves to rebellion and leading them 
in arms against the colony. No citizens were any longer 
to be exempt from the burdens and dangers of defending the 
country. Able-bodied men declining so necessary a duty 
were to be permitted (at the pleasure of the C(mnnittee 
of Safety) to leave: ^ those who had taken arms against 
the American cause, or otherwise com])r()mise(l themselves, 
1 Journal of the Convcniion of December, 1776, 70. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 133 

woro denied this privilege. The eolony thus laid down the 
principle that all citizens nni.st ran^^e themselves frankly on 
its side or <lepart; there was no longer room in Virginia for 
nciilrals. A few individuals of inflnence, like Williatii IJyrd, 
cotitinned to live imniolesled whik; remaininj^' (piiet, hnt 
the measure resulted in the expulsion of most of the IJrilisli 
merchants and clerks who still lingered. 

A special committee investigated the loyalists sent to 
Williamsburg by Woodford. Archibald ('ampbell, accord- 
ing to the rci)ort, had been opi)ose<l to violence; in resisting 
England becatisc; he thought that "a strict adherence to the 
commercial opi)osition would produce a redress of griev- 
ances." His chief offense was in taking Dunmore's oath : he 
had sent his family to ncnmida, whither he intended to fol- 
low shortly. John Willoughby, former county lieutenant of 
Norfolk and chairman of the local coimnittcc, had also been 
forced to take Dunmore's oath, and had ordered out the 
Norfolk mililia in Dumnore's interest. As for Cary Mitch- 
ell/ Woodford had been notified to send on the evidence, 
but htid fail(;d to do so. The committee found that "Archi- 
bald Campbell d<jes not appear to have been inimical to the 
rights and liberties of America," that John Willoughby had 
acted under compulsion, and that ('ary Mitchell did not 
apj)car to be unfriendly. The three men were th(>n <lis- 
charged on parole not to giv(; assistance or intclligcnc<^ to 
the enemy. ^ The two Moseh^ys had likewise taken the 
British oath, but had not aided Dunmore actively, and 
were discharged. Matthew Phripp was rejjorted to have 
played an important part in the ])atriot councils at Nor- 
folk before Dunmore's occupation of that i)lacc, at which 

* Journal of the Convenlion of December, 1775, 75. * Ibid., 82. 



134 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

time he also had been compelled to subscribe to the oath. 
"Falling into the power of Lord Dunmore," the report 
stated, "he had only the alternative of submitting, or ex- 
posing his life and fortune to his lordship's resentment; 
in his extremity he yielded, and took the oath; but as the 
said Matthew Phripp soon after manifested his willingness 
to support the common cause, we think, upon the whole, 
he ought to be restored to the confidence of his country- 
men." ^ 

The convention, in dealing with these first cases of loyal- 
ists, showed mildness, for the war had not as yet progressed 
far enough to produce much bitterness and, furthermore, 
the Norfolk patriots had been put in a difficult position 
by Dunmore. This moderation was so marked that at the 
beginning of 1776 several Tories who had gone on board the 
fleet in Norfolk Harbor with their families ventured to ask 
Woodford and Howe for permission to return home. The 
commanders replied that they would receive and protect 
the women and children and hold the men as prisoners. 
Their action was approved. ^ 

At the first of the year the line had not yet been strictly 
drawn between enemies and friends and the colony was not 
exactly in a state of war. Practically speaking, war existed, 
but not legally. Commerce still continued under the re- 
strictions of the Continental Association, which was an 
embargo and not a war measure; and the convention was 
somewhat at a loss as to the proper procedure in the case 
of the vessels that county committees and militia were 
now seizing in Chesapeake Bay. Open war had put an end 
to any usefulness the Association might have had as a pro- 

» Journal of the Convention of December, 1776, 85. * Ibid., 80. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 135 

test, or means of gaining concessions, but it remained in 
force because the Revolution was a civil war and not an in- 
ternational conflict begun under proper forms — commerce 
had not been placed on a war footing. Necessity, however, 
was righting this artificiality, as is shown in the case of 
a shipmaster, Stephen Pierce, held for carrying salt from 
Antigua to Maryland in violation of the Association. He 
was allowed to proceed on his way because Maryland prob- 
ably needed the salt.^ 

Captured ships and cargoes were another war feature 
the convention was forced to deal with. Several vessels 
had been seized in Hampton Roads on the charge of vio- 
lating the Association, or being the property of enemies of 
America. The committee recommended the forfeiture of 
the sloop Agatha freighted with a quantity of rum, — not 
because the rum had been improperly imported, but on 
account of the hostile conduct of the owners. Again, the 
sloop Swallow, bringing in salt, had not violated the Asso- 
ciation, but the attitude of Hector McAllister, ^ the owner, 
towards the colony required investigation . The brig Cor- 
let, engaged in importing contrary to the Association, 
should be sold at auction. The convention laid this report 
on the table and ordered that the cargo of the Agatha, 
except the rum, be delivered to the owners. 

Captain Richard Barron, in April, 1776, seized two 
vessels at Fredericksburg and one at Port Royal under the 
resolutions of Congress making all British property on 
the water liable to capture. Two of the ships belonged to 
British firms having agents on the Rappahannock; half of 

^ Journal of the Convention of December, 1775, 84. 

* Executive communications, 1776 (Virginia State Library). 



136 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the third was claimed by an agent as his personal prop- 
erty and so not subject to confiscation. This awkward 
question of divided ownership — which meant that the 
government could only claim a part of a property — re- 
peatedly came up in connection with estates belonging to 
business firms composed both of citizens and alien enemies. 
Seizures under Congressional recommendation, which were 
limited at first to effects captured at sea, later included 
every form of property. 

Before adjournment the convention's attitude towards 
loyalists changed greatly. When it met the body had no 
very definite mode of punishment in mind; when it ad- 
journed it had passed severely repressive measures . This 
transformation resulted largely from the obnoxious activ- 
ity of the loyalists around Norfolk during their brief sea- 
son of ascendancy. Norfolk and Princess Anne patriots, in 
their bitterness, requested that the British sympathizers 
of the neighborhood be moved to a distant part of the 
colony to prevent further mischief. They declared that 
the Tories had raided their plantations, robbed them of 
plate, money, and other valuables, stripped their wives 
and daughters almost to nakedness, burned their houses, 
and ended by dragging some of them into captivity. These 
various alleged misdoings led to the passage of an ordinance 
"for establishing a mode of punishment for the enemies 
to America in this colony." ^ All white men who had been 
in arms against the colony and who should refuse to sur- 
render themselves within two months, or who might there- 
after aid the enemy, were to be imprisoned at the discre- 

^ Letters to the Committee of Safety, 1776 (Virginia State Library). 
Hening, ix, 101. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 137 

tion of the Committee of Safety, which should also seize 
their estates and apply the revenues to the use of the 
colony. The committee, now wielding the power of im- 
prisoning and pardoning Tories, became an extra-judicial 
court. This ordinance, however, did not prove sufficiently 
definite; it left the treatment of loyalists still a matter 
rather of policy than of law. The May, 1776, Convention 
accordingly increased the penalties for disaflfection to for- 
feiture of estates and imprisonment, although such part of 
the property of imprisoned loyalists as was judged proper 
should be applied to the support of their families.^ Com- 
missioners appointed by the county courts were to admin- 
ister the forfeited estates for the benefit of the public. To 
settle the question of allegiance, the convention adopted a 
test oath. The arms and ammunition of all persons refus- 
ing it were to be taken for the state. ^ A good many non- 
jurors in various parts of the colony were disarmed under 
this provision, yet not without compensation, at least 
ordinarily. Thus Philip Rootes was allowed six pounds 
for a rifle seized at his house.' 

Many Norfolk cases came before the convention in the 
last days of the session. Alexander Gordon, who had borne 
arms against the colony and had been active in Dunmore's 
behalf; Joshua Whitehurst, who had attempted to raise 
recruits for him; Dr. Thomas Hall, ensign in Dunmore's 
army; a dozen Tories who had fought at Great Bridge; the 
commander of one of Dunmore's tenders; nine others who 
had been pressed into military service by the British were 
held as prisoners. Five men who had "in some measure 

1 Hening. ix, 130. ^ Journal of the Convention of May, 1776, 26. 

' Calendar of Virginia State Papers, viii, 213. 



138 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

aided Lord Dimmore," but had not taken arms or shown 
especial zeal, were released on parole to do nothing un- 
friendly in the future.^ Forty negroes, most of them cap- 
tured at Great Bridge, were condemned to sale in the 
West Indies or restored to owners. ^ 

The convention also examined the man who — inex- 
plicably enough — seems to have been the most dreaded 
Tory produced by Virginia in the Revolution. John Good- 
rich, a Nansemond planter and shipowner, had rendered 
the colony conspicuous service in the early stages of the 
struggle by bringing in from the West Indies a quantity 
of that sorely-needed article, powder.^ This performance 
drew down Dunmore's resentment and he was arrested 
and put on a sort of parole, being required to visit the 
governor's ship once every ten days. Apparently Goodrich 
was a subject of intimidation — an art in which Dunmore 
excelled. At all events, after a little while he began to 
act definitely on the British side. In command of an armed 
sloop he captured a ship in Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina, 
and is said to have taken another in Chesapeake Bay. 
His career as a privateer was cut short when his sloop was 
boarded in Ocracoke Inlet by North Carolina patriots, 
who sent him a prisoner to Williamsburg. The govern- 
ment there signified its belief that he was a dangerous 
character by putting him in close confinement. After a 
careful examination the convention found him guilty of 
bearing arms against the colony and aiding the enemy; 
he was ordered to be sent to the interior and his estate 
was seized and administered by commissioners. 

» Journal of the Convention of May, 1776, 97. « Ibid., 100. 
' Calendar of Virginia State Papers, viii, 144, 151. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 139 

Other charges against loyalists came to the convention 
from zealous county committees. The Dinwiddie Com- 
mittee, informing the convention that Thomas Irving, a 
deputy postmaster in that county, was also agent for 
Neil Jameson, a Tory, asked for advice in regard to remov- 
ing him. "The committee would not chuse to be officious 
in acting without authority from the Convention — but are 
clearly of opinion it is highly improper and may be of great 
prejudice to suffer the said Irving to continue post-master 

— which may give him an opportunity of opening letters 

— of conveying intelligence of the most dangerous nature 
to the welfare of this colony, . . . yet we are anxious not 
to exceed the line of our duty and therefore beg, Sir, you 
would be pleased to point it out to us." ^ This letter is a 
fair sample of the spirit of obedience and desire for guid- 
ance inspiring the local committees in their dealings with 
the convention. Recommendations and orders from the 
latter body usually received prompt obedience, even when 
contrary to the wishes of committees. Thus, Wilson Curie, 
chairman of the Elizabeth City Committee, reported to 
Pendleton that that body had delivered a ship it had 
seized to the owner according to the orders of the con- 
vention. The Northampton Committee, which had sent 
several loyalist prisoners to Williamsburg, was highly 
gratified because the convention approved its conduct 
towards "those deluded people." ^ In general the rela- 
tions of the convention and Committee of Safety with 
the county committees were strikingly harmonious. 

In the interval between the March and May Conven- 
tions of 1776, the Committee of Safety once more became 
1 Executive communications, 1776. * Ibid. 



140 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the central power in the colony. Now that the die was 
cast, and open war was being waged in Virginia, and the 
convention itself had decided the treatment of loyalists, 
the junta acted more vigorously and definitely than in its 
earlier career. The committee's former wide discretionary 
powers were outlined in positive ordinances. Besides, the 
conservatives in the early months of 1776 had begun to 
lose hope of a reconciliation with England and anticipated 
an independent government. 

Norfolk continued to be the chief internal problem of 
the Revolutionary administration. The destruction of this 
center of disaffection in January, 1776, somewhat simplified 
the question, but the country people of the region had been 
considerably tainted by Tory associations and Dunmore 
still found sympathizers and intelligence-givers ready to 
serve him. All this section lay open to raids by the British 
naval force, which continued to depredate with increasing 
severity. So constant were these raids and of such benefit 
to the raiders that the Committee of Safety as early as 
March, 1776, pondered the question of advising the people 
of the lower country to remove into the interior and leave 
their lands uncultivated, in order to cut off supplies from 
the British. This policy naturally failed to meet the ap- 
proval of the population affected by the proposal, which 
urged, with obvious reason, that the removal of more 
than five thousand people in spring weather over bad 
roads would involve much suffering.^ 

The committee hesitated to go so far as to enforce a 
general depopulation of the country, but, nevertheless, on 
April 10, 1776, ordered all persons in Norfolk and Prin- 
1 Letters to the Committee of Safety, 1776. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 141 

cess Anne Counties, who had joined Dunmore and taken 
his oath, to move into the interior at least thirty miles 
from the enemy. To insure the enforcement of this order, 
the slaves of the evicted loyalists were to be carried inland 
and returned to their owners only when these had settled 
themselves as directed. A thousand pounds was voted for 
the relief of poor people unable to bear the expense of 
moving. The committee had been induced to take this 
action by an exaggerated letter from General Charles 
Lee,^ then commanding at Norfolk, as well as by the 
general belief that Norfolk Tories were engaged in sup- 
plying Dunmore with provisions and information. ^ The 
Princess Anne Committee, in its perturbation over this 
sweeping order of banishment, declared to the Committee 
of Safety that, while the Norfolk people were much given 
to communicating with the enemy, the Princess Anne 
population was free from that iniquity. "As to the inimi- 
cal dispositions of many of the Inhabitants of this County," 
the committee pathetically continued, "we beg leave to 
assure you that we, who have lived and been bred up with 
them, and have heard their Sentiments on this unhappy 
Dispute, and have been Witnesses of their conduct, think 
there are as few in this County as in any part of the Colony, 
and are as willing to join in any Measure for the advance- 
ment of the American cause; but such is our unhappy 
Fate that from the Manoeuvres of Lord Dunmore in this 
County when it was almost in a defenceless state, that we 
have been thought in general Inimical and has been a 
great means of our being grossly misrepresented." ^ The 

* Given in full above. ^ Letters to the Committee of Safety, 1776. 
» Calendar of Virginia State Papers, vui, 166. 



142 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

committee asked that nothing more be done than to put 
the live stock out of Dunmore's way.^ The government 
agreed to allow friends and neutrals to remain on their 
estates on this condition: the inimical were to be forced 
to remove with their families and effects. The Norfolk 
people had also protested against the removal order; and 
since Dunmore had now left that vicinity the convention 
rescinded the resolution except in so far as it applied to 
the inimical. 

As above stated, the Committee of Safety succeeded to 
the convention's function of court of appeals from the 
counties. Appellants felt that this tribunal would treat 
them with less prejudice than local committees, and, in 
fact, the committee acted with great lenity in these ap- 
peals. The cases of Joshua Whitehurst and Walter Hatton, 
of Accomac, have been mentioned. In the case of Archi- 
bald Ritchie, 2 accused by the Essex Committee of violat- 
ing the Association by importing, the committee recom- 
mended the prosecutors to pass over the offense with a 
warning. The imported goods were not condemned, be- 
cause brought in before the passage of the confiscatory 
ordinance. The convention, however, in the spring meet- 
ing condemned goods seized before the passage of the or- 
dinance, and left it to the option of local committees to 
confiscate goods or go on publishing offenders as before. 

The committee was as anxious to avoid usurping the 
power of the local organizations as the latter were to refer 
cases to it for decision. When Thomas Mann Randolph 
and Thomas Underwood demanded to know whether the 

* Executive communications, 1776. 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, viii, 164. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 143 

Goochland Committee had authority to investigate charges 
against Randolph, mentioned in a summons to Under- 
wood, the committee ruled that it had no power to inter- 
fere with the Goochland authorities in an examination, 
but expressed a wish that they would not act on mere 
slanders and would confine themselves to actual Toryism.^ 
It frequently sent offenders back to the local courts for 
trial rather than seem to stretch its authority. The com- 
mittee, about the first of March, 1776, adopted the policy 
of confining loyalists on parole within certain limits. They 
were perhaps led to take this action by appeals like that 
of Jacob Ellegood, the noted Tory, who had been thrown 
into jail and petitioned to be allowed to return to his plan- 
tation and live there quietly. The committee refused his 
request, but ordered his removal to Page Warehouse, 
Hanover, to remain on parole not to go out of the town 
limits or hold any correspondence on political subjects.^ 
EUegood's conduct proved so obnoxious to the patriotic 
people of Hanovertown that the committee, on June 1, 
1776, transferred him to Winchester.^ Later, after a tedi- 
ous detention, he was exchanged as a prisoner of war. 
Mary Ellegood, his wife, appealed to the convention for 
relief in June, 1776, complaining that she and her three 
children had been deprived of the necessities of life since 
the seizure of her husband's estate. The committee, in- 
deed, used loyalist property for the public service before 
the policy of actual confiscation began. Slaves of loyalists 
were frequently put to work for the government, as in the 
case of six of them confined in the public jail, who were 

^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, vui, 1S24. * Ibid., vin, 103. 

» Ibid., vm, 183. 



144 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

used around the prison. The horses of George Logan, who 
had joined Dunmore, were sold and his slaves hired out 
for the benefit of the treasury.^ 

Ralph Wormeley, Jr., one of the few men of high stand- 
ing in the planter class openly identified with the British 
cause, came before the Committee of Safety, on April 22, 
1776.^ The occasion of his summons was an indiscreet 
letter written to John Grymes, which happened to fall into 
the hands of the patriots and was forwarded to Williams- 
burg. The committee decided that nothing in Wormeley's 
conduct, or even in the letter, came within the scope of the 
ordinance establishing penalties for disaflFection, but that 
the letter clearly proved an inimical disposition and a 
readiness to join the enemy on occasion. Wormeley was 
accordingly ordered to be discharged on giving bond for 
£10,000, not to correspond with the British or aid them, 
or to leave the colony without the consent of the govern- 
ment. The unfortunate correspondent had graphically 
described the difficulties under which Tories labored in 
tidewater Virginia in 1776, pressed as they were on one 
side by Dunmore and on the other by the Williamsburg 
government, sympathizing with the British but unable to 
aid them. Wormeley protested in utter irritation against 
Dunmore's demand for an unequivocal stand on his side, 
when such a course could only bring ruin to the impotent 
loyalist without benefiting the governor. But the ruin of 
his friends meant nothing to Dunmore, who was catching 
at every straw in the vain hope of securing some elements 
of strength. 

Wormeley's complaint was as follows: — 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, viii, 185. * /jj^_^ ym^ iq^^ 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 145 

Ralph Wormeley, jun. to John Grymes, Esq. 

When you and John Nelson returned from Norfolk, you in- 
formed me that Lord Dunmore, wished or expected or thought 
it my duty, that I should immediately in person repair to his 
Lordship; that some such ostensible mark of my attachment to 
government, and Loyalty to my King was looked for from me, 
and that notwithstanding my inequivocal steady and invariable 
conduct, if I still continue at home, I may be exposed to the indis- 
criminating ravages of war, without any Chance of reparation. 
Whether this opinion is founded on the last proclamation of th*.- 
King's on the late advice of the minister or from his Lordship's 
conjecture I do not know: as to the proclamation and the late 
advices from the Minister, I have an easy answer. 

1st. I have never seen the proclamation; never heard it read 
or repeated, it cannot then be expected of me to pay respect to 
any instrument of that sort, whose contents I can have no cog- 
nizance of: before they are submitted to my senses. 2nd. as to 
the advice of the Minister which may lead his Lordship to con- 
clude it to be the duty of every man, now, when the friends of 
government are in such a state of impotency, or rather are under 
such compleat dominion, to repair to his Lordship without proba- 
bility of advancing any practical scheme of utility, of concerting 
any effectual plan of operations, and without any regard to cir- 
cumstances, I say Sir, such advices are repugnant to the words 
and meaning of the King. In the true Knowledge of our present 
situation, his Majesty thus expresses himself, "and although 
many of those unhappy people may still retain their loyalty and 
may be too wise not to see the fatal consequences of this usurpa- 
tion and wish to resist, yet the torrent of violence has been strong 
enough to compel their acquiescence till a sufficient force shall 
appear to support them." A few observations in the above 
quoted passage will prove the repugnancy, "unhappy people" 
in what.-^ being overpowered by these usurpers, so overpowered 
that they cannot even hope they can only wish to resist it: this 
being the case, what are these unhappy people to do? What does 
his Majesty expect? not their fruitless vain endeavors which prej- 
udice every cause: he knows that the torrent of violence is strong 



146 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

enough to retain them in their compulsive acquiescence "till a 
sufficient force shall appear to support them." He expects then 
they will wait the event; they will have, they have a right to pro- 
tection. Every effort and endeavor now on their part would 
only issue in ruin to themselves and ruin to their cause. No man 
bears the accursed Tyranny with more impatient mortification 
than I do, and if there was a corner on the face of the earth, that 
I could support myself in and enjoy that freedom that I am now 
violently deprived of, I would for the gratification of my happi- 
ness fly to it. I have too much feeling not to be exquisitely sen- 
sible of my slavish condition. . . . But after all what beneficial 
consequences could my personal attendance operate in favor of 
that cause, whose success I have at heart.'* My example is not 
efficacious enough to influence others to follow it. What exer- 
tions of mine could now avail.'* and are not ineffectual exertions 
Capitally erroneous in policy? would not, or might not the de- 
parture of a person of my insignificance quicken the jealousy of 
the present rulers, give fresh vigor to prosecutions, and make 
them lash our few party friends, not with the rod of iron, which 
we have experienced, severe enough for the most criminal atroc- 
ity, but with a red hot one, fresh from the infernal forge of 
Tyranny. 

If tho' the Governor should think my presence necessary and 
that I can in any degree be assistant to his Lordship, govern- 
ment or my country, will give me an official Summons, and afford 
me proper facilities to reach him, I will at the hazard of that pre- 
carious negative quiet that is now indulged to me, I will to the 
prejudice of my health, which you know is at present interrupted 
by a most inveterate disorder ... at the risk of my life, of every- 
thing, obey it.^ 

Wormeley did not give the required bond and remained 

in custody. It is probable that his political separation from 

almost the entire planter class oppressed him with a sense 

of isolation and finally weakened his fervent devotion to 

* Executive communications, 1776. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 147 

the royal side. At any rate, on May 11, 1776, he addressed 
the convention and, expressing regret for his unfortunate 
letter, declared his attachment for the American cause. 
The only point in which he differed from public opinion, 
he asserted, was in the means to be adopted for obtaining 
relief from Parliamentary taxation. He had never opposed 
public measures or violated the Association and the ordi- 
nances of the convention. The committee that examined 
his case reported that the letter showed an unfriendly and 
dangerous spirit and recommended his confinement to his 
father's estate in Frederick and Berkeley under bond of 
£10,000 not to leave without permission. Wormeley then 
gave bond and entered upon exile. ^ 

As the year 1776 advanced, Virginia began to settle 
down into a more regular status: the Revolution, in its 
primary and immediate character, was over. An unfailing 
sign of this, county committees began to be superseded as 
tribunals by courts of inquiry appointed from members of 
committees or militia officers and juries were summoned 
as in ordinary courts of law. The large, unwieldy com- 
mittees gave place to these small commissions. The courts 
of inquiry were later succeeded, upon the establishment 
of a permanent government, by the old-style county-court 
system. The courts of inquiry conducted themselves much 
as the committees had done and retained the same con- 
nection with the Committee of Safety, sending offenders 
on to Williamsburg as before. The Gloucester commis- 
sioners' court, on April 4, 1776, tried John Wilkie on the 
charge of communicating with the enemy. The jury 
brought in a verdict of "guilty of giving intelligence to 
* Journal of the Convention of May, 1776, 15. 



148 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

our Enemies and going on board the man of war inten- 
tionally," and sent Wilkie to the Committee of Safety.^ 
The committee ordered an inventory to be taken of his 
estate and appointed Sir John Peyton commissioner to 
sell it. 2 The Norfolk court of inquiry, on April 30, 1776, 
examined Thomas Talbott charged with being inimical. 
As three witnesses testified in his behalf, he was discharged. 
But at the same session the court ironed John Scott, con- 
victed of supplying the enemy with provisions, and sent 
William Creamer to Williamsburg for the same offense. 
Another court of inquiry consisting of four officers, held 
in May, 1776, considered cases of furnishing supplies to 
the enemy, desertion, and drunkenness;^ and also tried the 
loyalist John Willoughby, ordered to remove inland from 
the coast but disobedient. The chief evidence against 
Willoughby was a statement he had made that the pro- 
ceedings of the patriot party would force the people to 
become Tories or form a third party. As Willoughby 
pleaded drunkenness for an excuse he was treated leniently, 
intoxication being regarded by the Fathers as a palliating 
circumstance in almost every crime from failure to attend 
church to treason. The case of George Oldener was more 
serious. Oldener, among other things, had aided one of the 
witnesses against him under the impression that he was 
a deserter from the American army and had called a 
prisoner held by Dunmore a "damned rebel." He was 
judged to be unfriendly to the patriot cause, but as he had 
committed no overt act to bring him within the ordinance 

1 Letters to the Committee of Safety, 1776. 
* Journal of the Convention of May, 1776, 8. 
« Letters to the Committee of Safety, 1776. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 149 

prescribing imprisonment for "enemies of America" he 
was sent into exile in the interior. 

Appeals came to the Committee of Safety from the new 
courts of inquiry just as from the former committees. The 
Committee of Safety, on June 8, 1776, tried a case appealed 
from Middlesex, that of Charles Neilson, who was ordered 
to remain within the limits of Fauquier County and to be 
kept in custody until he gave a bond of £100 not to leave 
the county.* He was released from confinement on giving 
bond and went away to Fauquier, while five commissioners 
took possession of his Middlesex estate and his other 
property in Gloucester.^ 

The Committee of Safety, on June 21, 1776, sat on John 
Goodrich, Jr., son of the noted Goodrich, who had created 
such a stir in the colony. John Goodrich, the younger, 
with his brother Bartlett, in assisting his father to bring 
in the powder, had imported forbidden goods and falsified 
the invoices, changing the nationality of articles from 
Scotch and Irish to Dutch, — a not infrequent transfor- 
mation in those days of the Continental Association. They 
had ingeniously pleaded in defense that they were forced 
to take other British goods in order to get the powder, but 
the convention confiscated the goods and branded the 
importers as inimical. John Goodrich, Jr., further found 
himself in the custody of William Ilarwood, bound not to 
correspond with Dunmore or go more than three miles 
from Harwood's place without permission. When no wit- 
nesses appeared against him at the date set for his regular 
trial before the Committee of Safety, he was discharged 
on giving bond of £2000 for good behavior, which William 

1 Calendar of Virginia State Papers, viii, 194. ^ Ibid., viii, 207. 



150 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Harwood furnished. Goodrich refused, however, to take 
the oath prescribed for suspects and suffered disarming — 
proof positive of a hostile spirit. Both he and Bartlett 
Goodrich received rather lenient treatment, which the au- 
thorities no doubt often regretted later. For the Goodrich 
sons became a thorn in the side of Virginia before the 
war ended. Managing to get away to New York, they 
fitted out privateers and waged warfare on Virginia com- 
merce with energy and luck; they dashed in through the 
Capes and cut out ships time and again. Of all the Brit- 
ish privateers swarming in these waters they were the 
most noted. 

The Revolutionary Convention met for the last session 
on May 6, 1776. Edmund Pendleton, chairman of the 
Committee of Safety and president of the December, 1775, 
Convention, was again elected president. Pendleton, on 
assuming the gavel, made a brief speech in which he called 
the attention of the convention to the necessities of the 
situation: he reminded the delegates that the courts had 
been closed for two years and that many criminals were 
waiting trial, and that the ordinance "prescribing a mode 
of punishment for the enemies of America" required 
amendment. 

The speech was the keynote of a sterner policy towards 
loyalists. Two days later Pendleton laid before the con- 
vention a letter from John Tayloe Corbin to the Tory, 
Charles Neilson, "containing sentiments inimical to Amer- 
ica," together with the proceedings of the King and Queen 
Committee upon the same.^ Corbin was committed to 
custody and his letter referred to a committee, which 
^ Executive communications, 1776. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 151 

reported that it showed "a disposition unfriendly and 
dangerous to the rights of his country" and recommended 
his confinement on parole. Corbin had quite a tale of 
hardship to tell in his behalf. He stated that he had writ- 
ten the letter in October, 1775, to Neilson, who was about 
to go to Norfolk with a passport from the Middlesex 
Committee, but that he had not violated the colonial 
regulations in any way. In spite of this, the commander 
of the local minute-men had arrested him, taken him from 
his family, and, after keeping him a prisoner for four days, 
finally brought him before the county committee, which 
had discharged him as not coming within its jurisdiction. 
Anxious for a vindication, he had come to Williamsburg 
with the suspected letter, when, on his arrival, he had been 
again arrested under a military warrant and confined in 
the common guardhouse. No open act was charged against 
Corbin, but nevertheless the convention demanded a bond 
of £10,000 and paroled him to stay in Caroline County. 
His case, like Wormeley's, attracted great attention, as he 
was one of the wealthiest and most prominent men in the 
colony and one of the few rash enough to protest, even in 
a private letter, against the Revolution. 

In spite of such occasional severity, the convention con- 
ducted its investigations with strict justice and dismissed 
a number of suspects.^ The public temper, however, was 
gradually hardening under the stress of war. Not only 
was disaffection becoming a more serious offense as the 
gap between the colonies and England widened, but prop- 
erty rights were less carefully guarded. The convention 
directed the Caroline and Spotsylvania Committees to 
» Journal of the Convention of May, 1776. 27, 31. 



152 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

determine the ownership of four vessels seized as British 
property by the colonial naval commander in the Rappa- 
hannock. Significantly enough, the convention placed the 
burden of proving ownership on the claimants. It was not 
now for the colony to prove that suspected ships were 
British property, but for the owners to prove that they 
were not. The convention continued the policy of the 
Committee of Safety in sending prisoners for trial to the 
commissioners' courts in the counties where the offenses 
had been committed, except in appeals or cases of excep- 
tional difficulty. Joshua Hopkins, held on the charge of 
carrying provisions to Dunmore, was sent to Princess Anne 
for trial. ^ It had required some trouble to secure proof 
against this cunning fellow, but he was caught at last com- 
ing from Dunmore's ship by a party that had lain in wait 
for him two days. Likewise, Thomas Mitchell, arrested on 
suspicion of being inimical, was sent to the York court. A 
very sad appeal came to the convention from eighteen 
ruined merchants and clerks who wished to leave the 
country. They had been given permission to leave on 
finding themselves unable to go on doing business, and 
actually boarded a vessel, but it had been seized for the 
use of the colony. As they had canceled their contracts 
and sold their effects before leaving, they were now home- 
less and destitute. 2 The convention granted them permis- 
sion to go away — a permission seldom withheld from 
British-born merchants seeking to leave Virginia. It was 
a solution of the difficulty much more palatable to the 
government than confinement. Finally, Britons who were 

^ Journal of the Convention of May, 1776, 11. 
* Executive communications, 1776. 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 153 

so lacking in tact as to wish to remain in an impossible 
position were forcibly expelled; yet such measures were 
never adopted during the administration of the Committee 
of Safety, which always treated these unfortunates with 
consideration. 

When the May, 1776, Convention adjourned, after pro- 
viding a constitution, the Revolution proper was at an 
end. It was carried through in Virginia with far less effort 
than in most of the other colonies. Little blood was shed 
even in battle; no Tories had been put to death, legally or 
by mobs, and few had been tarred and feathered. At the 
same time the Revolution in Virginia, as elsewhere, had 
only been accomplished at the price of great loss and suf- 
fering, and hundreds of exiles had fled forth from the once 
easy-going and hospitable province into an unfamiliar 
world. 

By far the greater number of loyalists went quietly 
abroad and little record is left of them. Those remaining 
behind fared hard. In May, 1776, at the time of the meet- 
ing of the convention, a dozen Tories lay in the public jail 
in Williamsburg, together with several prisoners of war 
and a number of negroes belonging to the former. These 
wretches, confined in the unspeakable eighteenth-century 
jail and obliged for the most part to provide their own food, 
suffered terribly. Under the impulse of distress one or 
another of the prisoners from time to time would plead 
for trial, sometimes in vain. Robert Shedden, in a letter 
to John Page, declared that he had done nothing hostile 
to America and asked for an opportunity to clear him- 
self. John Carmont stated that he had been arrested four 
months before for boarding a vessel in Norfolk Harbor 



154 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

and sent to Williamsburg without a hearing before the local 
committee. Three months later he had been brought be- 
fore the Committee of Safety and ordered back to Nor- 
folk for trial; but, nevertheless, had continued in prison in 
Williamsburg without a change of linen, money, or other 
necessaries. Wliat the condition of the prisoner in the 
public jail at Williamsburg was may be seen by the report 
of a committee appointed by the convention to investigate. 
This jail, it should be borne in mind, was no worse than 
other prisons of that period in which men starved, died of 
infectious diseases, or froze to death for lack of fire and 
clothing; in fact, it was far better than the prisons pro- 
vided by the British for the American soldiers in New 
York. 

The said jail [the committee reported], being badly planned 
and situated for the purpose of admitting a free air, all the pris- 
oners are more or less distressed on that account; this inconven- 
ience is greatly increased, as well by a large number of persons 
being under confinement in the same small apartment as the heat 
of the weather; altho' most of the rooms seem to have been prop- 
erly attended to, and kept in tolerable decency, an offensive smell, 
which they think would be injurious to the most robust health, 
prevails in them all, but which they think might be in a great 
measure removed by burning tar in and frequently purifying the 
rooms with vinegar. The rooms in which the negroes are confined 
abound with filth, a circumstance, as they are informed, owing 
to the want of necessary hands to assist in providing for so large 
and unusual a number of prisoners; several windows may, with 
safety, be cut in the walls of the jail ; ventilators, if properly fixed, 
would be of infinite service: Some complaints were made by the 
prisoners against the unwholesomeness of their diet, which, upon 
inquiry, were found to be groundless. John Goodrich, the elder, 
is at present, and hath been for three days past, indisposed with 



COMMITTEE OF SAFETY 155 

a slight fever, proceeding, as they imagine, from a restlessness and 
peevishness under his chain; two gentlemen of the faculty have 
advised his removal to some other place, lest that disorder, which 
at present is but slight, might in a short time, for want of fresh 
air, terminate in a putrid fever. ^ 

It is pleasing to note that the convention ordered the 
ameliorations recommended to be immediately carried into 
effect and directed the removal of John Goodrich, minus 
his chain but under a strong guard, to some place where 
he might recover his health. 

As the spirit of this report goes to show, the Revolution 
in Virginia was accomplished without any unnecessary 
cruelty and, so far as possible, under forms approaching 
those of law. Local conmiittees suppressed the disaffected, 
but in a struggle which was, in effect, a civil war, self- 
preservation demanded the sacrifice. Many hard things 
were done, many men suffered imprisonment, and many 
more were ruined, but suffering and loss are the inevitable 
accompaniments of revolution. County committees, in- 
deed, sometimes showed a small intolerance, an inquisito- 
rial, and perhaps tyrannical, spirit,! but 'small men will not 
work with enthusiasm otherwise. The central authority, 
the convention and the Committee of Safety, with the suc- 
ceeding council, were always broad-minded and inclined 
towards tolerance. Mob violence, as has been noted, was 
rare. 

' Nothing is more characteristic of the elevated ideals of 
the convention than its release, on June 12, 1776, of two 
criminals in the public jail on the ground that no legitimate 
court existed to try them.'^ 
"^' ^ Journal of the Convention of May, 1776, 37. ^ Ibid., 44. 



150 THE REVOLUTION IN VHIGINIA 

Whereas [it declared], Samuel Flaiiap;an and Manasses Mc- 
Gahey have heeii sevenilly eoinmil.UHl lo llic jitihlie jail in the 
city of Willianishurg, eJiarged with ea])ital oU'enses, for wliicli 
tliey ouglit, in the regular course, to have been brought to trial, 
at a court of Oyer and terminer and jail delivery, on the Second 
Tuesday in this month, which could n(;t be held by reason of the 
present convulsions, and for want of a (.commission from the late 
executive i)ower; and wliereas no method is ytit adopted for the 
trial of criminals, and it might be thought inconsistent with the 
liberty we are ench'avoring to secure, in the most pennanent man- 
ner, to kec]) men charged with criminal offenses in long confine- 
ment without bringing them to tiieir trials, tiie Committee thinks 
it best to grant a pardon to the said criminals resi)ectively, hop- 
ing that tiiis h'liity, together with tlie im])risonment they have 
und«'rgone, will produce a sincere contrition and reformation of 
their nuinners, and that they nuiy hereafter prove useful mem- 
bers to society. 

So it will he seen that the Revolution had begun to 
show its humanitarian side, that side of social progress 
and develo|)nient destined to be of great importance, and 
of far-reaching influence on the present age. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 

The war and the Declaration of Independence were not 
precisely welcome events to the conservative planters, 
who nevertheless shared both in waging the war and 
bringing about the Declaration. They were active patri- 
ots, it should be understood, but with regrets: history, 
which is to a certain extent obscured by the necessary use 
of party names, has no exact term that fits them — Henry 
is so distinct a figure; Pendleton so diflScult to label defi- 
nitely. The obscurity is due in part to the fact that the 
different elements of the great patriot party have not been 
studied discriminatingly; we have been too much given to 
dividing the people of the colonies into sheep and goats, 
patriots and Tories ; when, in fact, the fine of demarcation 
was frequently slight and rather a tendency than a prin- 
ciple; — at least, in the beginning and before the realities 
of war definitely hardened the division into friends and 
enemies. 

War was depressing to the conservatives because it 
meant the failure of their own particular form of resistance 
to England. They had placed great faith in the Continental 
Association and enforced it with vigor and intelligence in 
their stronghold in eastern Virginia, in the hope that the 
British government would be so impressed by a united 
colonial resistance as to give up its efforts to extend im- 
perial jurisdiction in America. Even when this boycott 



158 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

policy proved ineffective, the conservatives, as we have 
seen, struggled through nearly all of 1775 in an attempt 
to avert war in Virginia and to secure an understanding 
with Dunmore. Nor did they abandon hope of reconcilia- 
tion with England for some time after the beginning of 
hostilities in the colony itself. The planter class, which 
largely controlled the assembly, entered on the struggle 
without a thought of independence. Only when the vigor- 
ous military policy of the British government left no doubt 
of its intention to conquer the colonies did the conserva- 
tives realize that separation was inevitable. The rebellion 
had developed into a prolonged contest between what were 
practically separate nations, to be fought out in regular 
campaigns. Then, with reconciliation a vanishing dream 
and a parting of the ways a present necessity, the planter 
class, instead of splitting into American and loyalist parties 
as in some other colonies, cast its decision unitedly for in- 
dependence and ruthlessly overrode the scattered individ- 
uals who demurred. For while the tidewater country 
gentlemen were proud of their Anglican connection, they 
were also prepared to go any lengths in asserting the rights 
of Englishmen, as they conceived them, and they had now 
lost all illusions as to the possibility of coercing the British 
government into compliance with colonial demands. There 
was small opposition in Virginia to the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence : Robert Carter Nicholas, alone of important men, 
opposed it. At the same time to Pendleton, Bland, and their 
confreres, who had rejoiced over Wolfe's victory at Quebec, 
independence was not a thing so desirable in itself as it was 
to young radicals like Henry and Jefferson, who had lost all 
English feeling and become Americans. It should never be 



THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 159 

forgotten that in the eyes of tlie older men the Revolution 
was a conservative movement, an effort to uphold their 
liberties against the encroachments of imperiaUsm. 

Eighteenth-century liberalism had little touched this 
older generation. Their ideal state was no borrowed vision 
from Rousseau, but the colony as they knew it, unham- 
pered by a governor's meddling and a royal veto; they 
would have been well content with a governor whom they 
could keep browbeaten and a home administration con- 
siderate enough to ignore them. Revolution was not their 
fancy. They wanted the gods to nod on Parnassus — or 
even to snore — but they wanted the gods. They thought 
English thoughts and upheld English institutions and con- 
descendingly looked down on dissenters and democrats as 
not of themselves. Therefore, separation from Great Brit- 
ain, carrying with it the necessity for a readjustment of 
the constitution, was a sad necessity to the conservatives 
and an embarrassment besides. So long as the patriots 
continued to fight within the British Empire, the issues re- 
mained political and chiefly external ; but independence a,t„_j, 
once raised the question of institutions and let into the 
arena the tribe of discontented, religious dissenters and 
social reformers, who wished to alter the structure of the 
state. The whole character of the Revolution underwent 
a change; no taxation without representation was super- 
seded by other denials. In fact, the motives of the plant- 
ers in embarking on the struggle with England and the 
political and social developments that followed bear a cer- 
tain resemblance to the course of the French Revolution. 
That great movement was not social in its inception, but 
rather economic: it was brought on by the government's 



H$0 TTTE REVOLUTION IN VTRCINIA 

fiiiMiuial <linicijlli<'M arul l)y lifl'orts ul remedy, and ended 
in ananliy; from 1 780 lo 1704 i,s a far ery. Similarly, the 
llevoldtion in Virginia began with the colony's resistance 
U) the aggressive policy of the Tory ministry, and the 
men who led the revolt, and in whose hands political power 
mainly lay, had little thought of the betterment of society. 
JJut it is the history of revolutions that they seldom keep 
to tlie issue at stake, broadening out fr^)m a contest over a 
constitutional point into some large assertion of liberty. 
In several of the American <()loiues, wliere society was on a 
more sim])le an<l equal footing, this develojjment was not 
marked, but in Virginia, with its fairly definite class dis- 
tinctions, an attsick on existing customs and institutions 
was inevitable. The Revolution in Virginia began with the 
fights of America and ended witli th<' rights of man. In 
Virginia the social side of the Revolution was incomparably 
more importfoit than in any of the other colonies, l)e<-ause 
there alone the upper class was numerous, powerful, and 
united in the patriot party, while the democratic opposition 
was also strong and ably led — in a word, the elements 
existed for a genuine and long-lasting political struggle. 

'I'he rise of democracy lia<l been foreshadctwcd by the 
rapid !sprea«l of dissent in the decade i)rece«ling the Revolu- 
tion and by Patrick Henry's career as an agitator, but no 
legal reforms were secured before 1770, and the conserva- 
tives prevailed over Henry in the opening months of the 
Revolution. Se])aration from England proved fatal to their 
party; for, though it was nearly e((ual in number to the pro- 
gressives in the C'onvention of March, 177.5, an«l controlled 
the ('ommittee of Siifety, it formed a <lecided minority in 
the May, 1770, Convmlion, whit h had as its chief duty 



THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 161 

the organization of an independent government. Out- 
numbered as they were und put on the defensive by the 
untoward development of the Revolution, the conserva- 
tives nevertheless struggled hard for the mastery of the 
convention, and, when their own efforts at initiative hope- 
lessly failed, used obstructive tactics with skill and obsti- 
nacy. The differences between conservatives and progres- 
sives were fundamental. The former wished the Revolution 
to end with separation from the British Empire, without 
touching the framework of colonial law and society; they 
hoped to continue the colonial constitution and the colonial 
church minus the British interference. The progressives, 
on the other hand, sought to establish a government of 
equal rights, a democratic state. Both sides had represen- 
tatives of weight and ability in the constitution-making 
May Convention. Among the progressives were Patrick 
Henry, disappointed in his military ambition and back in 
his old place; Mason, full of generous political theories; and 
the young James Madison, now displaying his great abili- 
ties for the first time. Pendleton's prestige, notwithstand- 
ing, still stood so high that he was once more elected presi- 
dent of the convention over the progressive candidate, 
Thomas Ludwell Lee, and he could still count on the wide 
influence of Nicholas and Bland. 

The debate over the question of independence was brief, 
but not altogether uneventful. Henry proposed radical 
resolutions of separation, leaving to the Continental Con- 
gress the duty of providing a new form of government for 
the colonies. The conservatives, however, supported Pen- 
dleton's resolutions, which simply declared Virginia free 
and independent. Henry, thereupon, in the interests of 



162 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

harmony, abandoned his own plan and aided in passing the 
conservative declaration of independence. Thus, Virginia, 
first of the American States, broke the connection with 
England, acting on her own initiative and without refer- 
ence to Congress. The convention then went on to the 
work of framing a constitution — the first written constitu- 
tion given to the world. 

The all-important committee appointed to propose a 
plan of a constitution included Henry, Bland, Nicholas, 
Mason, Madison, Archibald Gary, Edmund Randolph, and 
Paul Carrington — a marvelously gifted group of men. 
Patrick Henry, the man of the people, naturally led the 
democrats, Nicholas the conservatives, while Pendleton 
was the main o])position leader in the committee of the 
whole. Henry reported to his colleague, Richard Henry 
Lee, then in Congress, on May 20, 177C: — 

The grand work of framing a constitution for Virginia is now 
before the Convention. . . . Perluips I am mistaken, but I fear 
too great a bias to Aristocracy prevails among the o])ulent. I 
own myself a Democrat on tlie plan of our admired friend, 
J. Adams, whose pamphlet I read with great pleasure.^ 

And to John Adams himself he wrote : — 

Our convention is now employed in the great work of forming 
a constitution. My most esteemed re])ubHcan form has many 
and powerful enemies. A silly thing, published, in Philadelphia, 
by a native of Virginia, has just made its appearance here strongly 
recommended, 't is said, by one of our delegates now with you — 
Braxton. His reasons upon and distinctions between private 
and public virtue are weak, shallow and evasive, and the whole 
performance an affront and disgrace to this Country; and, by 
one ex])ression, I suspect his whiggism. ^ 

' Henry's Patrick Ilcnry. i. 411; The Nation, 51, 107-09. 
^ Henry's Patrick Henry, i, 413. 



THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 163 

The conservatives tentatively put forward this consti- 
tution advocated by Carter Braxton and supposed to he 
written by him. It was rather clost'ly modeled on the 
colonial constitution, providing a house of representatives 
elected by the people, which, in turn, chose a coun(;iI to 
hold office for life and sit as the upi)cr house in i)lace of 
the colonial council appointed by the king. The assembly 
elected the governor and a privy council to assist him; the 
governor api)ointed judges and military officers, and the 
lower house the other chief officials of the State. 

The progressive majority, scarcely considering this old 
and illiberal model, quickly took uj) George Mason's plan 
of government, beginning with the Bill of Rights. The 
conservatives, though too few in number to prevent the 
passage of this declaration, filibustered on every clause. 
Thomas Ludwell Lee indignantly wrote Richard Henry 
Lee on June 1, 1770: — 

A certain set of Aristocrats — for we liavc such monsters here 
— finding tliut their execrable system cannot be reared on such 
foundations, have to this time kept us at l)ay on the first line, 
which declares all men to be born free and ind(;i)endent. A 
numl)er of absurd or unnieaninj^ alterations have l)een proj)os('d. 
The words as they stand are ajjproved by a very great mujority, 
yet by a thousand masterly fetcluis and stratugenis the business 
has been so delayed, that the first clause stands yet uuassented 
to by the Convention. * 

And Randolph adds : — 

The declaration in the first article of the bill of rights, that all 
men are by nature equally free and indei)endent, was opjjoscd by 
Robert Carter Nicholas, as being the forerunner or pretext of 
civil convulsion. 

' Henry 'b Patrick Henry, i, 425. 



164 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

In spite of conservative opposition to liberal political 
philosophy, which was now finding place in practice, the 
progressives succeeded in passing George Mason's pream- 
ble to a constitution. The Virginia Bill of Rights is one 
of the noblest of .political documents. Based primarily on 
the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights of 1689, it 
included much of eighteenth-century theory besides those 
guarantees of freedom incorporated in the British constitu- 
tion. The opening statement of the equal right of all men 
by nature to freedom, independence, and enjoyment of 
life, liberty, and happiness was destined to become im- 
mortal when touched by Jefferson's pen in the Declaration 
of Independence. Other sections affirm the sovereignty of 
the people and the rule of the majority; separate the legis- 
lative branch of government from the executive and ju- 
dicial ; provide against continuous occupation of office; con- 
firm suffrage rights, trial by jury, and the freedom of the 
press; and declare the subordination of the military to the 
civil power. The most important section made a full grant 
of religious freedom. This clause was attributed by Ed- 
mund Randolph to Henry, and was altered by Madison, 
who struck out the word "toleration" in order to broaden 
the assertion of liberty. The conservatives made a strong 
stand against it, for they feared, not without reason, that 
it premised an attack on the established church.^ After a 
sharp contest, Henry and the progressives succeeded in 
carrying it. 

After the Bill of Rights came the constitution, also 
written by Mason, but less completely his work. It is 
probable that Jefferson's ideas, as communicated to the 
^ Henry's Patrick Henry, i, 431. 



THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 165 

constitution-makers by his personal representative in the 
convention, Edmund Randolph, had some weight. The 
new organ of government mainly followed the lines of the 
colonial constitution and was strongly influenced by John 
Adams's "Thoughts on Government," which was Henry's 
guide. It provided a lower house and a senate elected by 
freeholders and a governor elected by the two houses, 
which also elected most of the other oflScers. Representa- 
tion continued, as in the colonial past, to be of counties in- 
stead of population, a feature peculiarly objectionable to 
Jefferson and one destined to excite many murmurings of 
discontent in the west, which was the under-represented 
section. Small counties like Warwick with only a few 
hundred voters elected two delegates just as did large 
counties with several thousand voters. In the senate, how- 
ever, representation was more nearly equal. The suffrage 
limitation to freeholders owning fifty acres of land was not 
illiberal in a country where land was cheap. All in all, the 
constitution was less advanced than the Bill of Rights, and 
left the laws and machinery of government much as before, 
except that the lower house, freed from the restraining veto 
of the colonial governor and not yet adjusted to the limita- 
tions of the new constitution, had greater power than the 
old House of Burgesses. The constitution, in fact, was 
somewhat negative; it outlined what could not be done 
rather than what could, and, under its forms, the future 
government of Virginia might be the same oligarchy of 
planters it had been in the past, or genuinely democratic; 
everything depended on the political complexion of the 
majority in the House of Delegates. 
After the adoption of the constitution, the convention 



166 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

proceeded, on June 29, 1776, to elect the first governor 
of the Commonwealth. The progressives could not have 
thought of presenting any other candidate than Patrick 
Henry, the foremost figure of the Revolution and the most 
popular man in Virginia. The conservatives, still smarting 
from their defeat on the Bill of Rights and fearful of the 
future, made a last effort to keep the highest place in the 
government from the leader who had so long opposed them 
and whom they had succeeded in thwarting in his great 
ambition. They accordingly nominated Thomas Nelson, 
president of the colonial council and one time acting 
governor, a passive loyalist. Randolph says of his can- 
didacy: — 

Nelson had been long secretary of the Colony, and ranked high 
in the aristocracy, who propagated with zeal the expediency of 
accommodating ancient prejudices by electing a man whose pre- 
tensions to the chief magistracy were obvious from his being 
nominally the governor under the old order of things, and out of 
one hundred and eleven members, forty-five were caught by the 
device of bringing all parties together, although Mr. Nelson had 
not been at all prominent in the Revolution. From every period 
of Henry's life something of a democratic and patriotic cast was 
collected, so as to accumulate a rate of merit too strong for this 
last expiring act of aristocracy.* 

The conservatives, with their impossible Tory candidate 
and their still more impossible harking back to the colonial 
constitution, nevertheless made a good showing, mustering 
forty-five votes to Henry's sixty. And in the election of 
a privy council to advise the governor they had things 
their own way, possibly because the convention may have 
thought that Henry needed a balance. It could not foresee 
* MS. History. Virginia Historical Society. 



THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 167 

that the agitator would be sobered by time and responsi- 
biUty into a conservatism almost Bourbon. 

Patrick Henry, after a decade of stormy political life, now 
became the first magistrate of the largest American State. 
His election at such a time of crisis as the summer of 1776 
testifies to the confidence put in him by the public and to 
his wide influence, which were no more than what his serv- 
ices to the Revolutionary cause deserved. But the great 
orator lost rather than gained by his elevation. His gifts 
were distinctly forensic, not executive; he had no liking for 
the dry routine of government. His administration, there- 
fore, was mediocre, while, unfortunately for him, his office 
cut him off from the assembly, the one real power in the 
State, which had not yet become entirely freed from colo- 
nial mistrust of the executive. Because of this reserve, this 
instinctive clinging to tradition, the actual first place in 
the new government passed to the leader of the House of 
Delegates, who happened to be the astute and pushing 
Jefferson, just returned from Congress in order to work out 
his social reforms in Virginia. 

The rival democratic leaders were not only unlike in 
temperament, but in outlook. Patrick Henry was essen- 
tially an agitator and one of the ablest that ever lived, the 
first great representative of the American democracy and 
still its most splendid and magnetic personality. Since his 
career was confined to Virginia save for three brief terms 
in the Continental Congress, Henry is much less generally 
known than Jefferson, who was greatly inferior to him in 
most of the qualities of leadership. Nevertheless, Jefferson, 
though gifted with nothing of Henry's eloquence and little 
of his charm and power, succeeded in displacing him as the 



168 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

head of his party in Virginia and in occupying the position 
which should have been his by historical development, that 
of founder of the national Democratic-Republican Party 
and President of the United States. Jefferson, in all proba- 
bility, would have eventually replaced Henry even if the 
latter had remained in the assembly instead of retiring 
into the governorship, for the orator was a political radical 
rather than a social reformer and much of a conservative 
at bottom. He was too acute to become a Rousseauan doc- 
trinaire like his rival, mistrusting human nature because 
he knew it so well. More than that, deep down in him he 
was a localist; he loved the old ways, the ancient land- 
marks, and had no wish to live in an un- Virginian Virginia 
given over to the strange gods of liberal philosophy. The 
Revolution for him had ended with the establishment of 
a commonwealth under a constitution of equal political 
rights; he wanted no further egalitarian advances. In some 
way, too, hard to explain, the man had changed since his 
disappointment in military command. Up to that time he 
had been a Boanerges; after his return to civil life he 
settled down from fiery action into the humdrum round of 
office routine for which he was so unsuited; his ambition 
narrowed, his imagination failed. Few psychological stud- 
ies are more interesting than the transformation of the 
radical, prepared in 1775 for any bold advance upon the 
future, into the obstructionist fighting his last great fight 
against the adoption of the Federal Constitution and mag- 
nificently losing. 
^ For Jefferson, on the other hand, the Revolution only 
began with the Declaration of Independence. That was 
necessary in order that other things might follow — that 



THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 169 

wrongs might be redressed, inequalities leveled, and the 
State brought to the Utopian perfection all generous 
thinkers demanded; freedom from England was only the 
condition of political and social development. For this 
reason, Jefferson, with his definite reforms, must have sup- 
planted Henry, who had no programme at all to offer, 
especially in an age of dreams when prophets often pre- 
vailed over men of action. As for the reformer himself, he 
was a curious mixture of prophet and practical politician, 
a sort of common-sense Robespierre, devoid of Robes- 
pierre's fanaticism and essential madness; what he could do 
to advance the rights of man he did, and for the rest — the 
more he could not do — was satisfied to leave to another 
age. That he was sincere need not be questioned; his 
enthusiasm began in youth and continued through life. 
Democracy was a religion to Jefferson, and, with all his 
tortuous politician's soul, he held fast to the faith, even 
amidst the disillusionment of the French Revolution ; it was 
to him the miracle that makes dry bones men, the power 
destined in time to heal the sorrows of the world. 

Needless to say, the constitution of Virginia did not 
meet with Jefferson's full approval, because representation 
remained on its old undemocratic basis and other abuses of 
the colonial era continued to exist. But as the assembly 
wielded great powers, in spite of the limitations of a written 
constitution, society might be transformed by legislative 
enactment. The member from Albemarle consequently 
brought forward his measures at the first session of the 
assembly of the Commonwealth, in October, 177C. Most 
noted of these reforms was the abolition of entail, which 
Jefferson carried in the face of a passionately resisting 



170 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

minority led by Pendleton; but even more important was 
his work in humanizing the Virginia criminal code, which 
he eventually managed to accomplish. Primogeniture was 
the pet Virginian imitation of the English aristocracy, and 
Jefferson proved to the satisfaction of the democratic 
majority in the House of Delegates the injustice of the 
system by unanswerable if somewhat shallow logic. Entail 
had been of small importance in the rough early days when 
land was too abundant and cheap to need such safeguard- 
ing, but it became one of the bases of colonial society in 
eastern Virginia in the eighteenth century, when all the 
good lands in that section had been patented and extension 
into the western hinterland was attended by the discom- 
forts of border life and the occasional risk of Indian forays. 
The conservatives, rightly feeling its importance to the 
aristocracy that had grown up partly by its aid and was 
now staggering under the Revolutionary blast, struggled 
hard in its defense, but vainly. Jefferson cut away this 
great anomaly in the democratic republic, which the con- 
stitution had left untouched. 

The successful innovator immediately proceeded to at- 
tack the social order in another vital spot, the established 
church. What was the full meaning of the religious liberty 
clause in the Bill of Rights nobody knew. Beyond doubt it 
removed restrictions on worship, such as the requirement 
to take out licenses for dissenter meeting-houses and the 
prohibition of itinerant preaching, but whether it cut all 
connection between dissenters and the state church — 
whether it continued the state church, in fact — remained 
uncertain. Should the whole population, or only professed 
Anglicans, or anybody at all pay tithes? Dissenters held 



THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 171 

that the Bill of Rights ended all involuntary religious rela- 
tions whatever, whether of opinion or money contribution. 
Conservative Anglicans just as positively maintained that 
it merely intended the ease of tender consciences and not 
the curtailment of the establishment. Public opinion was 
divided, but probably a majority of the people opposed 
the overthrow of the church they had been raised in and 
undoubtedly a majority of the assembly did. Jefferson 
worked round the problem with characteristic shrewdness. 
A direct attack on the establishment would have failed, 
and, indeed, only after a struggle Jefferson describes as the 
severest he ever engaged in did the progressives succeed in 
repealing the existing acts on the statute books concerning 
religious worship, clearly incompatible as these were with 
the Bill of Rights. The repealing act, besides sweeping 
away the whole English system of religious restraint, ex- 
empted dissenters from contributing to the support of the 
establishment and suspended the salaries of all ministers 
until the next meeting of the assembly. This last, apj^ar- 
ently rather innocent stipulation, proved fatal. In revolu- 
tionary times, with the spirit of liberalism rapidly growing, 
it was not likely that state support would be renewed, once 
discontinued. A number of brief suspensions postponed the 
settlement of the matter of tithes from 1776 to 1779, each 
one lessening the church's chances of rehabilitation.^ 

Jefferson, in his career in the Virginia assembly, struck 
the old order other and almost heavier blows. He revised 
the laws in the interests of humanity, abolished the general 
death penalty for felony, — that relic of common-law bar- 
barism which had cost so many thieving blacks their lives, 
* Separation of Church and State in Virginia, 54-55. 



172 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

— and attempted to secure universal education. He even 
drafted a bill for the gradual emancipation of slaves, but 
never introduced it. His was the chief part in the removal 
of the capital from Williamsburg, the center of tidewater 
social life, to the village of Richmond, a move engineered 
ostensibly to secure safety from British raids, but in reality 
to weaken the conservative faction. Richmond, indeed, 
proved rather more accessible to invaders than Williams- 
burg. The early part of 1777 saw Jefferson in the ascend- 
ant, and he remained so until 1779. At the May, 1777, 
session of the assembly, he nominated George Wythe for 
speaker of the House of Delegates against the conserva- 
tive candidates, Robert Carter Nicholas and Benjamin 
Harrison, and secured his election.^ This was an important 
event in party progress, for hitherto the office of speaker, 
occupied by Edmund Pendleton, had been a conservative 
stronghold. With its acquisition the democrats held con- 
trol of all the governmental machinery. 

But the conservatives, weak as they were in the fervid 
year of 1776 and for some time thereafter, began to gain 
strength with the long continuance of the war. They al- 
ways had a solid corps of tidewater delegates to count on, 
and they became sufficiently emboldened by June, 1779, 
when Jefferson was elected governor to succeed Henry, to 
make a bid for the reestablishment of religion on the basis 
of a common state support for all churches. This project 
was offered in opposition to Jefferson's Bill for Religious 
Freedom, introduced at the same session and intended 
wholly to sever religion from political and legal connection. 
At the same time, that moderate democrat, George Mason, 
1 Randall's Life of Thomas Jefferson, i, 209. 



THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 173 

brought forward a compromise scheme to preserve the 
property of the colonial church to the Anglicans without 
establishment, but this failed along with the Bill for Reli- 
gious Freedom and the conservative bill for aiding all 
religions. The only result of a long debate was the final 
repeal of the old act of 1748 providing salaries for minis- 
ters, the act suspended from session to session since 1776. 
By the mid-Re volutionaiy year of 1779 the Common- 
wealth bore all the marks of a permanent state, and loyal- 
ism, except around Norfolk, had been pretty generally 
repressed. The Scotch merchants and clerks who had 
bargained at every village and crossroads were now ban- 
ished refugees, as well as the few native Virginians devoted 
enough to cling to the imperial cause in spite of all. But 
the political and social ideals of democracy had not yet 
prevailed; the conservatives, who saw what the progress 
of the Revolution meant, continued to oppose it and only 
waited a favorable opportunity to make their opposition 
effective. They needed two things — a means of dis- 
crediting their opponents and relief from the pressure of 
war, which concentrated attention on military affairs and 
tended to break down social distinctions. The first want 
was supplied by the failure of Jefferson's administration; 
the second came a little later with the treaty of peace 
in 1783. 



CHAPTER VII 

RULE OF THE COUNCIL 

Politically speaking, there were two phases in the 
Revolution in Virginia — the external and the internal 
conflict. In the first place, all patriots saw that suppression 
of pro-English feeling was a policy essential to the success 
of the Revolution; toleration of loyalisni was impossible. 
They were, therefore, entirely united on the question of the 
war and treated IJritish sympathizers as alien enemies, 
while at the same time they were themselves divided into 
conservative and liberal factions on the issue of the Revo- 
lution as a political and social development. There was 
always a large latent element of oy)position to the Revo- 
lution, which failed to become formidable because of un- 
favorable circumstances. The county committees early in 
the contest had prevented the formation of a Tory party 
by promptly repressing loyalists and driving them from the 
country. The convention and Committee of Safety more 
or less warmly cooperated in this work, and the executive 
created by the new constitution, the council, found that 
the enforcement of the laws against Toryism was one of its 
most imi)ortant labors. In fact, the government had to 
contend with discontent, malingering, and actual disaffec- 
tion until the very end of the war. 

The executive council took up its task on July 22, 1776. 
Its duties were much the same as those of the Committee 
of Safety, though its powers were circumscribed by the 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 175 

written constitution. The council, indeed, was the succes- 
sor of the colonial council in administration without the 
judicial and legislative functions of that body. Theoreti- 
cally the council advised, actually it ruled through the 
Revolutionary period; the governor acted as the presiding 
head of a board rather than as an independent function- 
ary. When Patrick Henry was absent, John Page, the 
lieutenant-governor, took his place without any apparent 
difference in the running of the governmental machine. 

Page and the other councilors formed an experienced 
and cautious group of advisers, with whom, at first thought, 
it might have seemed somewhat difficult for Henry to 
work in harmony. But the fast-taming radical managed 
to go well in harness with his associates and gave Vir- 
ginia a fairly capable if uninspired administration. It is 
needless to go into the general work of the council in any 
detail, because that was just what ordinarily falls to the 
lot of an ill-regulated government in war-time. The colo- 
nial administration was singularly inefficient and slovenly 
and the constitution had done nothing to improve matters. 
The council at first handled military and naval affairs, 
but later war and navy boards were created by the legisla- 
ture to relieve the pressure. The only result was that ad- 
ministration became thoroughly disjointed and conflicting. 

Among the first problems that faced the councilors on 
assuming office were the loyalist cases handed on by the 
Committee of Safety. They heard the appeal of a Tory, 
Maurice Wheler, from the verdict of Lancaster court, 
which had pronounced him as "being inimical." They 
concluded that there was "no reason to aj)prove of the 
Verdict given," but in the absence of part of the evidence 



176 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

referred the case back to Lancaster for retrial.^ Like the 
Committee of Safety, the council was moderate in its 
pohcy towards Tories. ^ 

In fact, the council rather liberally interpreted the laws 
intended to rid the country of loyalists or keep them in 
proper subjection; it preferred mild measures. In some 
cases suspects confined in prison were given their freedom 
on condition of leaving the State. In other cases, like that 
of Edward Murfield, who had been sent from Norfolk to 
Williamsburg under suspicion of disaffection, the accused 
were discharged on taking a pledge not to assist the enemy.^ 
James Walker, Joshua Hopkins, and John Carmont, im- 
prisoned in the public jail at Williamsburg, were released 
on giving security to stand trial in their respective local 
courts.^ Hopkins's trial by the Princess Anne court re- 
sulted in a conviction of disaffection, and the council con- 
firmed this decision, but because of the prisoner's age and 
infirmity allowed him his liberty on giving security for 
good behavior.^ It extended protection to the unfortunate 
Tory, Ralph Wormeley, Jr., who claimed that he had been 
disturbed by a mob while living on parole on his father's 
estate in Frederick. The council offered him a guard, and 
finally the assembly, in May, 1778, released Wormeley 
from his bond and allowed him to go home.^ 

More serious cases of disaffection also frequently re- 
ceived lenient treatment. John Goodrich, who was rightly 
considered dangerous, was sent to jail in the inland village 
of Charlottesville in the company of another loyalist, 

» Council Journal (1776-77), 23. 

2 Ibid., 140. ' Ibid., 61. * Ibid., 36. " Ibid., 97. 

« Journal, House of Delegates (May, 1778), 29. 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 177 

Andrew McCann, but three other prisoners sent at the 
same time to Charlottesville were allowed the range of the 
town limits, as were George Oldener and Charles Henley,^ 
convicted of giving intelligence to the enemy and confined 
at first in the New London jail.^ The council, in general, 
preferred to relieve Tories from actual confinement and 
allowed the Augusta county-lieutenant to use his discre- 
tion in paroling prisoners at Staunton. 

That some degree of rigor was necessary in guarding the 
more dangerous loyalists was illustrated by the Good- 
riches. Bartlett Goodrich and John Cunningham had been 
convicted by the Northampton court of violation of the 
Association; on their appeal the council confirmed the 
decision and put the prisoners on parole at New London. 
Goodrich and Cunningham broke their pledge not to go 
beyond the town limits and w^ere sent to Amherst jail, to- 
gether with James Parker, who refused to give parole. In 
August, 1777, John Goodrich, the elder, escaped from 
Albemarle jail in the company of three other Tory fellow 
prisoners. The council offered rewards for them and they 
were soon captured, owing to the difficulty of reaching the 
seaboard from the far interior. The council sent Goodrich 
to confinement in Bedford and the others to Williamsburg.' 
Goodrich complained to the council in October, 1777, that 
he had been kept in rigid imprisonment for eighteen months, 
"loaded with irons too heavy for mortal to bear, and ex- 
posed to daily insults and reproaches from a people, that he 
is forced to say are insensible to the feelings of humanity or 

» Council Journal C1776-77), 27. 

' Legislative Petitions. Princess Anne. 

« Council Journal (1777-78), 123. . 



178 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

delicacy. However reprehensible the conduct of your pe- 
titioner may be, yet he begs leave to affirm that it has been 
greatly aggravated by popular report and prejudice." He 
asked to be permitted to live on parole on one of the plan- 
tations allotted for the support of his family.^ 

This Tory family suffered great hardships. The com- 
missioners appointed to manage John Goodrich's estate 
allowed Margaret Goodrich, in July, 1775, one hundred and 
fifty acres of land in Nansemond and five hundred acres in 
Isle of Wight, with the growing crops and forty pounds for 
slave hire. 2 In October, 1778, Margaret Goodrich reported 
to the assembly that her allowance was entirely insufficient, 
since her slaves had been sent to the lead mines and the 
money granted her was barely sufficient to hire one slave, 
making it necessary for her to borrow money in order to 
clothe her children. In the latter years of the war, the 
Goodriches, as we have seen, were able to retaliate for their 
sufferings; Bartlett Goodrich proved especially annoying 
as a privateer. In July, 1778, the council directed the navy 
board to assist several persons anxious to fit out vessels to 
cruise against the Goodriches, and Congress sent two ships 
to lie in wait for them off the Virginia Capes. 

Many loyalists underwent examination by the council in 
the summer of 1776, but thereafter their number lessened, 
as most persons at all openly disaffected passed into exile in 
some distant part of the State or left the country. The 
penalties attending indiscretion taught caution to remain- 
ing malcontents. At the same time the attitude of the 
government towards loyalists grew harsher: it had acted 

* Journal, House of Delegates (October, 1777), 23. 
« Council Journal (1776-77), 96. 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 179 

hitherto with comparative mildness, but a change came in 
the latter part of 1776 with the great reverses suffered by 
the American army in the North. It had become evident 
that the States were engaged in a long and exceedingly 
doubtful struggle, and no place remained for the openly 
disloyal or passively disaffected. The time had come for 
forcing all men to make a definite choice of sides. The 
first session of the general assembly, in October, 1776, 
witnessed the increase of penalties for disaffection and the 
passage of an act against treason, which was defined as 
levying war against the Commonwealth and aiding and 
comforting its enemies.^ The penalty was death without 
benefit of clergy and forfeiture of property; the general 
assembly alone had the pardoning power. The law went 
on to provide heavy punishments for lesser degrees of dis- 
loyalty. Maintenance by publication, word or act of the 
authority of king or Parliament, was forbidden under pain 
of fine and imprisonment, not to exceed £20,000 and the 
term of five years. 

The government also aimed a final blow at the one gen- 
uine class of loyalists in the community, now greatly re- 
duced in number, it is true, but not yet entirely weeded out. 
The House of Delegates, on December 18, 1776, passed a 
resolution for the expulsion of the remaining British mer- 
chants and directed the council to carry the order into 
effect. The banished included all natives of Great Britain 
who had been in partnership with British merchants or 
acting as their agents at the time Parliament passed the 
act restraining American trade, with the exception of those 
who had shown attachment to America or had families in 
^ Hening, ix, 168. 



180 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the country. Exiles found in the State after a certain time 
were to be considered prisoners of war; county courts were 
required to furnish lists of British subjects within their 
jurisdictions.^ The council enforced this drastic measure 
with moderation; the county courts reported names and 
it decided whether the resolution applied in their cases. 
Reports began to come in from the counties in March, 1777. 
Sometimes the council was stern, as in the cases of James 
Sterling and James Dunlop, whom it decided were "within 
the description of persons who are to depart the State 
unless they can make appear their uniform attachment to 
the American cause." ^ But Archibald Gowan and John 
Dyer, two unfortunates presented by Hanover court as 
Britons, asked for an extension of time to make prepa- 
rations for departure and received ample space. ^ Again, 
when Halifax court presented several men for expulsion, 
the council decided that they had not been British agents 
on January 1, 1776, and so were not subject to exile.^ The 
Henrico court examined James Buchanan as one of the 
proscribed, but the council overlooked his partnership with 
British merchants and adjudged him friendly to the Ameri- 
can cause. Yet it was careful to see that orders of expulsion 
were carried out. It advised the governor, on March 26, 
1777, to issue a proclamation to the county-lieutenants 
ordering them to arrest "denounced" loyalists whose time 
for removal had expired and send them to the two deten- 
tion places for the disaffected decided on.^ Thereupon 
some of the remaining Britons were carried to these points, 

* Journal, House of Delegates (October, 1776), 103. 

« Council Journal (1776-77), 355. 

» lUd., 342, 399. * Ibid., 384. » lUd., 384. 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 181 

though the government did not incline to act rigorously, 
for it allowed John Miller to go from one town to another 
and finally to the Augusta Warm Springs for medical treat- 
ment. Another prisoner in a detention point, Archibald 
Brycc, received permission to live in Chesterfield on parole 
not to leave the county.^ 

Banishment of persons for such technical reasons as 
those set forth in the December resolution naturally worked 
a good deal of hardship, sometimes affecting people inno- 
cent enough in spirit if guilty by the letter. A case of this 
kind was that of John Fisher, of Halifax,^ who had lived in 
Virginia for more than twenty years, and who, while not 
engaged in business after 1775, the Halifax court, never- 
theless, considered an exile because of debts due his firm 
from a time as far back as 1765. The council allowed him to 
live at home on parole and the assembly agreed to his be- 
coming a citizen. It is evident from the records that a 
considerable number of individuals suffered banishment at 
this time. In one instance more than eighty Britons, under 
the leadership of Andrew Johnson, appealed to the council 
for leave to buy a ship and sail to England. The govern- 
ment willingly acceded and Johnson and his associates 
secured the vessel, which proved to be slow in arriving. 
When the Albion was finally ready to go, in May, 1777, the 
British fleet in the Chesapeake objected to her sailing 
from a Virginia port. After further delay, the assembly, 
in June, 1777, granted the Albion passengers permission 
to leave in British warships or any other craft.' 

Public opinion was less lenient to loyalists than the 

» Council Journal (1777-78), im. « Legislative Petitions. Halifax. 
» Council Journal (1776-77), 35C, 415. 



182 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

council. A petition came to the assembly from Mecklen- 
berg asking for the expulsion of all British merchants and 
agents, married or unmarried, and for severe punishments 
for refusal to take the paper currency in payment of debts. '^ 
The assembly, at the May, 1777, session, took a further 
step for weeding out loyalism by requiring males over six- 
teen years of age to take an oath of allegiance to "the 
Commonwealth of Virginia as a free and independent 
state." It became the duty of county courts under this act 
to tender the oath and keep accounts of persons swearing 
and refusing. Non-jurors were to suffer disarming, the loss 
of the rights of office-holding, voting, serving on juries, 
suing for debts and acquiring land, and besides were to pay 
double taxes. The oath was generally administered and 
taken throughout the State, though with exceptions, and 
innocent people frequently got into trouble on that ac- 
count. All through 1778 there was complaint from unfor- 
tunates who had inadvertently failed to take the oath and 
found themselves mulcted in double taxes. The law was so 
inefficiently advertised in thinly settled communities that 
many individuals did not take the oath in time because 
they had never heard of it. Apparently few refused to 
swear because of actual disaffection. 

The case of Joshua Tinsley is fairly typical of the hard- 
ships caused by the law. An old man, keeping close at 
home, he had failed to take the oath because of an impres- 
sion that the magistrates who tendered it would visit each 
man's house for that purpose, instead of merely attending 
militia musters, as they did. On account of this mistake, 
Tinsley found his tax bill multiplied from £3.10.9| to 
* Legislative Petitions. Mccklenberg (B£721). 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 183 

£7.1.7.* In some counties where justices were scarce, the 
inhabitants occasionally had difficulty in finding means to 
take the oath, and there were accidental non-jurors every- 
where. So many people incurred the penalty of double 
taxation from ignorance of the law that a supplementary 
act was passed extending the time limit for swearing, but 
even this did not remedy the trouble. ^ Generally speaking, 
the magistrates seem to have been careless in enforcing the 
law and in some cases actually negligent of duty. The 
assembly afterwards increased the punishment for non- 
juring to triple taxation, with the date, May 1, 1779, as the 
final day of grace. This provision increased the distress of 
innocent non-jurors without reaching the few remaining 
Tories, who managed to evade the oath despite every 
effort of the government. 

Many patriots suffered for purely technical reasons. 
Joseph Holt, of Charlotte, was fined triple taxes, though he 
had served in the Continental army; he had taken the oath 
a few days after the time expired.' John Nelson, of Char- 
lotte, came to take the oath before a magistrate, who had 
no form, but told him that willingness to subscribe was 
sufficient. Nelson accordingly went home satisfied, only to 
discover later that he was subject to triple taxation. In the 
fall of 1779 the assembly found it expedient to grant relief 
to the large number of accidental non-jurors writhing 
under their fines. The extra tax penalty was rej>ealed, and 
people who had paid it and who were also good Americans 
were to be reimbursed out of their future taxes.^ 

While the assembly by various acts and tests drove out 

* Legislative Petitions. Essex (A5349). ^ Jhid. Prinr-e William. 

• Ibid. Charlotte (A3993). * Hening, x, 194. 



184 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

of Virginia the class not in sympathy with revolution, it by 
no means succeeded in suppressing the spirit of disaffection. 
It was, indeed, wise mercilessness to expel the Scotchmen 
who might have acted otherwise as the nucleus of a hostile 
faction, but such a policy could not prevent the spread 
of discontent among the native population, part of which, 
though nominally patriotic, had no enthusiasm for the 
cause. By the summer of 1777 the early zeal had pretty 
well cooled everywhere, and the length and expense of the 
war were having their effect on the faint-hearted, who mur- 
mured against the heavy taxes. In July it was reported to 
the council that emissaries of the enemy, sometimes in the 
guise of commissary officers, were going around offering 
extravagant prices for commodities, in order to depreciate 
the currency, and discouraging the people by injurious 
reports of the condition of Washington's army.^ On the 
Eastern Shore, cut off from the mainland and open to 
British raids, many of the negroes had run away to the 
enemy and some of the white inhabitants were suspected 
of treasonably aiding them. To remedy this the council 
advised the removal of suspects from the Eastern Shore to 
the interior of the State, and it further directed the Norfolk 
and Princess Anne authorities to send the disaffected from 
those counties to Williamsburg except such as might be 
prosecuted at home under the treason law. Disaffected or 
criminal inhabitants assisted the enemy's privateers in 
plundering along the Chesapeake shores. In September, 
1777, Captain Barron, of the Virginia navy, captured one 
Dunbar, of Gloucester, who had made himself notorious as 
a freebooter.'^ 

» Council Journal (1777-78), 37. « Virginia Gazette. October 3, 1777. 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 185 

The council was driven in August, 1777, under the im- 
mediate fear of an English invasion, to take further steps 
against the disaffected. It issued an order to militia com- 
manders at all stations to require persons refusing to take 
the oath of allegiance, or "suspected of evil designs," to 
remove ten miles from any camp, garrison, or place where 
the enemy might be. The order affected a good many 
people, and the assembly, at its meeting in the fall, fearing 
that the executive had acted unconstitutionally, passed a 
special act of immunity. As the expected invasion failed 
to materialize, the council rescinded the order and per- 
mitted those who had been driven from their homes to 
return on giving parole. At the same time a number of 
persons arrested on the Eastern Shore and sent to Williams- 
burg were released on taking the oath. 

Cases of disaffection continued to be fairly numerous in 
1778. Edward Ker, a justice of Accomac County, was re- 
moved from his oflBce on the charge of being inimical, and 
William Montague, of Lancaster, was refused a commission 
as justice on similar grounds.^ One Yerby, a Lancaster 
militia captain, had the audacity to deliver a French vessel 
to British warships in the Rappahannock, though his com- 
pany had been mustered for its protection. The council 
ordered the arrest of the offenders and reimbursed the ship- 
master. Traitors like Yerby occasionally ran the risk of 
violence. Robert Parker, in May, 1778, complained to the 
assembly that on account of an unjust suspicion of his be- 
ing inimical the militia had burned his house and a court- 
martial had sentenced him to five years' imprisonment.^ 

1 Coundl Journal (1777-78), 217. 

2 Journal, House of Delegates (May, 1778), 10. 



186 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

The government pardoned him. The council, indeed, 
continued to treat offenders with considerable leniency. 
Prisoners, instead of being confined in jail or forced to leave 
the State, were frequently paroled within certain limits. 
The assembly, more susceptible to popular opinion, was 
more inclined to rigor. As if the laws were not already 
severe enough, the House of Delegates, in October, 1778, 
considered a bill "to expel from the Commonwealth, and 
to prevent in future the return of persons who have shewn 
themselves inimical to America." ^ This measure had been 
immediately suggested by protests from Norfolk and the 
neighboring counties declaring that there were still people 
living in the State who considered themselves subjects of 
the king and asking for their expulsion. The bill passed a 
second reading and then failed. 

The House of Delegates heard the appeal for admission 
to the State of a number of persons who had come from 
New York to Hampton in a flag-of -truce vessel. Most of 
them had been abroad and now wished to return to Vir- 
ginia. Charles Mortimer, who had gone to England in 1775 
and who claimed to have befriended American prisoners 
there, was allowed to enter the State on taking the oath of 
allegiance. Alexander Trent, returned from being educated 
abroad, and Elizabeth Muir were also admitted. Other 
immigrants or returning Virginians who were considered 
"unfriendly to the rights and liberties of America" failed 
to secure the same privilege. ^ Such exclusion may seem 
harsh, but the policy of banishing and keeping out loyalists 
was pursued more rigorously in other States. Massachu- 
setts even wished to cooperate with Virginia in the exclu- 

» Journal, House of Delegates (October, 1778), 9. * jnci^^ 40. 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 187 

sion of each other's loyalist exiles, but the scheme came 
to nothing. 

The year 1779 saw the beginning of the saddest, and to 
us, after the long lapse of time, the most regrettable feature 
of the Revolution — general confiscation. Hundreds of 
estates in all parts of Virginia, comprising many thousands 
of acres, had been left vacant by their refugee owners, who 
in most cases were Britons that had left the country at the 
outbreak of the war, or were Virginians living abroad and 
represented by relations or agents. These estates were now 
condemned by escheators and sold for amounts of depre- 
ciated currency representing a very small value in specie. 
The forfeitures, as in the case of almost all similar seizures, 
brought in little to the State, but greatly benefited pur- 
chasers, and there can be small doubt that much corruption 
and injustice were practiced and that many estates were 
wrongfully condemned and sold. Occasionally confiscation 
had occurred early in the Revolution. Thus, Dunmore's 
property was sold in 1776, and the council, on November 
16, 1776, heard the appeal of James Parker from a decision 
of the Accomac commissioners' court directing the sale of 
his estate and condemning him to imprisonment during the 
war, an unusually severe sentence. The council confirmed 
the decision and sent Parker to New London on parole, as 
he had accepted a commission from Dunmore.^ Property 
seized before this time had been chiefly marine, taken under 
direction of Congress, though ordinances of the convention 
sanctioned the forfeiture of estates of persons aiding the 
enemy. Few estates, however, were confiscated under this 
authority, and forfeiture was not immediately adopted by 
» Council Journal (1776-77) 233. 



188 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the permanent government when it came into power late in 
1770. An act of 1777 put the hinds, slaves, stock, and other 
property of British subjects, including debts, into the hands 
of commissioners to manage in the interest of the State. ^ 
Debts due British subjects might be paid into the treasury 
and the government would give discharge. This act affected 
hundreds of people, especially the debt clause. Planters 
stood indebted to British firms for great amounts, and 
many of them took advantage of the opportunity to rid 
themselves of their obligations in depreciated paper. The 
government made little by these transactions and at the 
same time laid up trouble for itself against the time when 
England demanded a reckoning for its merchants. After- 
wards the act was repealed, probably because it was seen 
to be little better than repudiation. 

The assembly, in May, 1779, passed from guardianship 
to confiscation. The act "concerning escheats and forfei- 
tures" "^ voided the titles of all property of aliens held by 
commissioners and directed the government to institute 
forfeiture proceedings. One month was allowed native 
claimants of such estates to file their pleas, after which 
limit the old titles were forever barred, though claims 
might be advanced on the money proceeding from the 
property sales. The act also defined British subjects, who 
were all Britons living outside the United States on April 19, 
1775, — the date of Lexington, — and who had not since 
then proved their allegiance to the United States; all 
persons residing in the country at that time who had ad- 
hered to the enemy or who had joined them. Immediately 
after the confiscation measure, the assembly aimed what 
* Hening, ix, 377. ^ Ihii., x, 67. 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 189 

was intended as a finishing stroke at the few loyalists who 
continued to linger in Virginia. The House of Delegates, in 
June, 1779, passed a resolution directing the governor to 
banish all Tory refugees and take means to prevent the 
return of persons designated as British subjects.^ The 
House further considered, but failed to pass, a resolution 
for disarming "all [)ers()ns inimical or disaffected to the 
liberties of America," which directed local committees to 
search for suspects and tender them a stringent oath.^ 

The essential injustice of confiscation as a policy and its 
cruel hardships soon became apparent. As long as commis- 
sioners held estates in trust, owners might hope to get 
them back some day, even though sadly i)lundered and 
depreciated, but with the condemnation and sale of prop- 
erty all chance of recompense practically disappeared; the 
needy State would not be able for years to pay to own- 
ers accidentally sold out the money obtained from sales, 
which were beggarly amounts at best. Escheators took 
great license in their proceedings; every estate deserted by 
its owner for any reason whatever was liable to seizure and 
forfeiture, and many innocent persons suffered loss. One 
case illustrates a number. Lucy Ludwell, a Virginia 
woman, while in England, had married John Paradise, a 
Greek. The couple continued to live in England and con- 
fided the care of Mrs. Paradise's Virginia estate to an 
agent. Paradise, not having been naturalized in England, 
was not a Briton, but nevertheless his property in Surry 
and York Counties, Virginia, was condemned, though the 
court had not found him a British subject.^ An inquisition 

» Journal, IIou.sc of DdcigJites (May, 1779), 08. 

* Executive communicationa, 1770. ' Legislative Petitiona. Surry. 



190 THE. REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

in James City found both husband and wife to be British 
subjects and condemned their property in that county. 

Notwithstanding many confiscation proceedings and 
many sales, the State derived small profit, partly because 
land auctions conducted in war-time in a country without 
currency could hardly bring in a large return, and partly be- 
cause the government allowed obstacles to be put in the way 
of forfeiture ^ and seemingly made little effort to prevent 
fraud in the conduct of the sales. The chief effect of con- 
fiscation, so futile as far as the State was concerned, was to 
pass over to astute neighbors abandoned lands and lands 
of uncertain ownership at purely nominal prices; it is doubt- 
ful whether the returns in badly depreciated paper were 
worth the trouble of conducting sales. If the government 
had required payment in articles of value, like tobacco and 
provisions, some good would have resulted; as it was, many 
people, hardly a handful of whom were active enemies, lost 
their Virginia lands and thereby paved the way for the rise 
of numerous small farmers to affluence. This was one of 
the most important social results of the Revolution. 

In the early years of the war the Virginia government 
was actively engaged in suppressing loyalism, but it was 
not called on to deal with insurrection. The State was in 
no great danger of internal disturbance so long as it re- 
mained uninvaded by the British. From the fall of Dun- 
more to 1780 the council was disturbed by only one instance 
of disaffection serious enough to threaten any military 
results. This was in the celebrated case of Josiah Philips. ^ 

There was little noteworthy about the man. He was a 

' Executive communications, 1779. 

* American Historical Review, i, 445, et seq. 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 191 

laborer living in Lynhaven Parish, Princess Anne, the one 
really Tory county. Philips himself had little concern with 
political issues; he was an ignorant and brutal man who 
took advantage of the opportunity offered by disturbed 
conditions to plunder his neighborhood, and if it were not 
for the fact that the government regularly attainted him 
of treason he might be passed over with a few words. 

Philips accepted a commission from Dunmore early in 
the war, because British commissions were going begging 
and might serve as warrants for miscellaneous acts of 
violence. He gathered a small band of followers, whites 
and runaway slaves, and began to plunder the isolated 
and swamp-covered country on the border of Virginia and 
North Carolina. By the summer of 1777 he had become 
so notorious that John Wilson, the much-tried Norfolk 
county-lieutenant, reported that he and a dozen others 
were threatening people and doing mischief.^ The council 
thereupon, on June 20, 1777, advised the governor to offer 
a reward for his capture. Philips was arrested and the 
government paid the reward. 

But he either escaped or was released and soon made 
himself a genuine nuisance. His band now included about 
fifty men, a force of sufficient size for plundering a thinly 
settled community. The council, on May 1, 1778, directed 
the authorities and militia in Princess Anne, Norfolk, and 
Nansemond to cooperate for his capture. Militia was or- 
dered out but failed to arrest the criminals, and Wilson 
advised the removal of certain families in league with them. 
The Philips gang was accused of committing robbery, 
arson, and murder. The council sent Wilson's letter to the 
» Council Journal (1777-78), 19. 



192 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

assembly and ordered a company of regular troops to the 
scene of disturbance.^ The House of Delegates was so 
moved by the letter that it feared that an insurrection was 
about to break out in the Norfolk region, known to be luke- 
warm or hostile towards the Revolution. Consequently, it 
decided, on May 28, 1778, that Philips and his followers 
were guilty of treason and should be attainted if they did 
not surrender before a certain date. Jefferson undoubtedly 
inspired these proceedings, the precedent for which, like 
so many other Revolutionary precedents, came from the 
English Civil War. The bill of attainder passed the House 
and Senate without opposition; it named June 30, 1778, as 
the last day of grace. ^ 

PhiHps did not surrender, but was hunted down by the 
State troops. Several of his band were captured and several 
others killed,^ among the latter one Will, a negro, who had 
distinguished himself for ferocity. Will was shot under 
the attainder, which, of course, made the attainted out- 
laws, but Philips, when captured, was not immediately 
executed as might have been expected, since no trial was 
necessary. Instead of proceeding under the attainder, the 
government indicted him in the general court, on October 
23, 1778, for robbery of twine and hats; two of his asso- 
ciates were tried with him for the same offense. All three 
were found guilty of felony, condemned to death, and 
executed on December 4, 1778. 

There was nothing very remarkable about Philips's at- 
tainder. The assembly claimed and exercised wide powers, 
and the treason laws allowed large scope. Probably when 

1 Council Journal (1777-78), 260. ^ Hening, x, 463. 

' Council Journal (1777-78), 310. 



RULE OF THE COUNCIL 193 

the government recovered from its fright and realized that 
Philips was only an ordinary robber instead of a traitor 
seeking to light the torch of loyalist revolt, it preferred 
to use ordinary legal measures in place of the attainder. ^ 
The point about the case that has excited comment is 
its curious sequel. In 1788, when the Virginia Convention 
was debating the adoption of the Federal Constitution, 
Edmund Randolph arose one day and declared that Josiah 
Philips had been the victim of an act of attainder, under 
which he had actually suffered death. ^ This astounding 
statement came from no less a person than the former 
attorney-general, who had conducted the prosecution of 
Philips in the general court on the charge of robbery. 
Stranger still, Patrick Henry next day defended the ex- 
ecution of Philips under the attainder, forgetting the reg- 
ular trial. Randolph's motive in making his statement 
is evident, for he was endeavoring to discredit the Revo- 
lutionary government of Virginia in the interest of the 
new Federal plan by displaying its tyranny and arbitrary 
methods. He probably counted on Henry's forge tfulness of 
the facts, and if so he calculated well. The former gover- 
nor's memory had failed him as to the trial, but it was less 
at fault than might appear. Many irregularities had oc- 
curred in connection with Philips. Will had been hunted 
down like a mad dog under the attainder and several others 
suffered a like fate. A slave named Bob, belonging to the 
estate of James Wilson, had been tried in Norfolk court in 
August, 1778, convicted of treason and robbery and exe- 
cuted; he was in all probability a member of the Philips 

^ Tucker's Blackstone, i, appendix, 293. 
* American Uisiorical Review, i, 449. 



194 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

gang.* It may well be that Henry confused these cases 
with that of Philips himself. 

The destruction of this band quieted the uneasy south- 
east for a time. The sternness of the government and its 
evident intention to proceed to extremities in the case of 
actual insurrection overawed any malcontents who might 
have been disposed to raise the British standard. 

At the close of Patrick Henry's administration, the gov- 
ernment under the new constitution was firmly established. 
While the law was undergoing radical change at the hands 
of JefiFerson, administration did not differ much from the 
colonial period. This continuance of tradition was due to 
the council, which conducted the routine business conserva- 
tively and intelligently. Unfortunately, it did not realize 
that a reorganization of the whole administrative system 
was essential for a government engaged in carrying on a 
long and exhausting war. 

1 Legislative Petitions, Norfolk (B4223). 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FALL OP JEFFERSON 

No man was ever more successful in moving with the 
spirit of his age than Jefferson, who, by way of reward, 
received all the honors his country could bestow and the 
veneration of successive generations of his countrymen. It 
seems hard to realize, then, that the great exemplar of 
democracy in the mid-channel of his career narrowly es- 
caped shipwreck complete and utter. That he did escape 
and finally triumphed was due not to dexterity or power of 
will, but to his capacity for expressing the ideals of the age 
in which he lived. He survived, not so much because he 
was a skillful politician as because he was a vivid writer. 

Thomas Jefferson was elected governor of Virginia on 
June 12, 1779, succeeding Patrick Henry, the first governor 
under the Commonwealth, who retired to the country in 
broken health. Jefferson had already succeeded Henry 
in something more important than the oflSce itself — the 
leadership of the progressive or democratic party in Vir- 
ginia. He had changed the Revolution from a struggle for 
external political liberty into a movement for social re- 
form, and in so doing displaced Henry from his chieftain- 
ship. The orator had sunk into a secondary place, while 
Jefferson had grown to be the leading figure in the State. 
His election to the governorship was a tribute to his activ- 
ity as a revolutionist and reformer, as well as his natural 
reward as the head of the victorious democratic party. 



196 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

At the moment of his election Jefferson wielded an in- 
fluence such as no Virginian had ever possessed. He had 
carried out great reforms in spite of conservative opposi- 
tion and had won the confidence and support of the great 
mass of poor and obscure men throughout Virginia. It is 
likely that the conservatives, who nominated John Page to 
oppose him, apprehended that his tenure of the executive 
chair would result in a further extension of his (to them) 
pernicious influence. "In a virtuous and free State," 
Jefferson said in his speech of acceptance, " no rewards can 
be so pleasing to sensible minds, as those which include the 
approbation of our fellow citizens. My great pain is, lest 
my poor endeavors should fall short of the kind expecta- 
tions of my country." ^ If there is a power which some- 
times playfully inspires merely formal utterances, turning 
them into prophetic, that power lay behind these words. 
Never were the flattering apprehensions of a successful 
candidate on assuming office better justified. Within the 
short space of two years Jefferson, in the judgment of a 
majority of the people, had fallen signally short of their 
expectations and an investigation of his administration was 
formally proposed in the assembly. 

This complete reversal of public opinion, which tumbled 
the democratic chieftain from his great position to the 
depths of apparent ruin, with impeachment in sight, re- 
sulted from the easy triumphs of the British arms in Vir- 
ginia in the latter period of the war. In what measure the 
patriot disasters were due to circumstances that Jefferson 
could not be expected to control and to what extent to his 
own mistakes and weakness cannot be exactly estimated, 
' Journal, House of Delegates (May, 1779), 31. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 107 

but an examination of the evidence shows that he was cer- 
tainly not free from blame. Jefferson was bitterly censured 
at tlie time. Hostile critics, both conservatives and pro- 
gressives, did not hesitate to charge him with incapacity 
and neglect, leading us to believe that his own faults were 
at the bottom of the military collapse in Virginia in 1781. 
On the other hand, his worshipful admirers, such as his 
biographer, Randall, looking back at these events from the 
period of final triumph and apotheosis, insist that he was 
wholly the victim of circumstances, and not, in the least 
degree, at fault. And his conduct was viewed in a third 
light. In the later years of Jefferson's career, when the 
unsatisfactoriness of his administration in Virginia was re- 
membered but remembered vaguely, party writers, seeking 
ammunition to fire at him from their failing guns, invented 
the legend of his cowardice, because of his enforced flight 
before the British army, a legend which that writer so 
skilled in misrepresentation, Goldwin Smith, was glad to 
rake up against his memory. "As governor of Virginia in 
the war he had shown lack of nerve if not of courage." * 
The accusation of cowardice was hardly contemporary and 
may be dismissed, but the charge of incompetence and neg- 
lect was so strongly urged and generally accepted in those 
dark days when Virginia lay at the mercy of every invasion 
of the enemy, that Jefferson came within a measurable 
distance of the end of his political career, since imi)ressions 
gained in a moment of crisis, however unjust, are likely to 
be lasting. The question put is whether this criticism, 
that the governor failed to provide for the defense of the 
Commonwealth and allowed himself to be caught without 
» The United States, 135. 



198 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

means of resistance, was just in the main, or whether he had 
done all that a man coukl be reasonably exj)ected to do, 
as his defenders allege, and merely earnetl the inevitable 
blame i)oured out on the ruling powers when a state suffers 
military disaster. 

In the first i)laee, it is necessary to note that the governor 
in the last years of the war had an exceptionally diflicult 
position to fill. After three years of constant warfare, the 
resources of the State, which had been expended without 
reserve for Washington's army, the Southern department, 
and other military purposes, were greatly diminished. 
Specie was gone, paper almost worthless, and taxation bore 
heavily on the peoi)le, who by this time had lost most of 
their enthusiasm for liberty. The conditions for making a 
successful resistance to the British arms were, therefore, 
much less favorable in 1780 and 1781 than earlier, when it 
is probable that an advance on Williamsburg would have 
met with stout opposition. Besides, the government of 
Virginia, unaccustomed before the Revolution to violent 
strains, was so imperfectly organized that administration 
in all departments, and particularly in the military, was 
exceedingly inefficient. Furthermore, the constitutional 
limitations of the governor's authority greatly hampered 
his action in all crises which might happen to coincide with 
a vacation of the assembly, the one powerful branch of 
government. The constitution-makers, in providing safe- 
guards against a tyranny, succeeded in furnishing the 
State with a weak executive to carry it through a doubtful 
and protracted war. Still another cause contributed to the 
helplessness of the State, giving the enemy a chance to 
march and plunder from one end to another absolutely 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 199 

undisturbed. In the earlier years of the war a respectable 
force of senii-regtilars had been inaintained in Virginia for 
local defense, but in 1778, owin^ to the h)sses sustain(Ml by 
the Virginia reginients in the Continental line, and also, 
j)ossibly, to economy, the two State regiments were sent 
northward to complete the Continental quota; liome de- 
fense was left largely to the militia. 

When these potent facts are taken into consideration and 
given their full weight, it still certainly a|)i)ears that Jeffer- 
son did not do all that an able and practic-al man might 
have done to j)rei)are for invasion, for that was a calamity 
wliich might have been seen to be inevitable once the 
British began to operate on a large scale in the South. An 
earnest effort to contjuer the South sooner or later nmst 
lead to an atta(;k on the great Southern Common W(;alth; 
the warning was amjile and should have b(;en heeded. 
When the enemy did come at last, they met no opjjosition 
worthy of the name. The whole country lay at their mercy. 

Right here it is just to acquit Jefferson of neglect of duty. 
Few more conscientious and industrious executives ever 
lived; he was always engrossed in the details of his office, 
and if he erred, as it clearly seems he did, he erred from 
want of judgment and driving power rather than from any 
la(;k of z.eal or la!)or. His failure to arrange an adequate 
defense of the State was apparently due in large i)art to 
two causes. Foremost came Jefferson's penchant for strict 
constitutionalism, for strict construction ideas did not 
originate with the Federal Constitution, !)ut descended 
from the colonial period. TIh; Revolutionary War was 
mainly a war of strict construction [)atri()ts against broad 
construction imperialists. It was this exaggerated respect 



200 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

for the Virginia constitution which prevented Jefferson 
from using strong means of doubtful legality at times when 
it is more expedient to go than to reflect upon the exact 
order of the going. The other reason for his failure to do 
his full duty lay in his inability to grasp the principles on 
which military operations are successfully conducted; to 
the last Jefferson was a man quite without military under- 
standing, a deficiency even more unfortunate when he be- 
came President of the United States than it had been when 
he was governor of Virginia. Both of these failings arose 
from the fact that he was a doctrinaire and not a man of 
action; he was a shrewd and successful practical politician 
and political leader, but he was anything but a good ad- 
ministrator. In agitation the doctrinaire need not be a 
man of action, for doctrinaires keep the world alive, but in 
war, which is the conflict of brute force, the man of action 
is demanded. But as it happens Moses frequently occupies 
the place of Joshua. 

Jefferson owed a great part of his success to his limita- 
tions, which, however, inevitably hampered him in other 
ways. His mind was exceedingly alert in the realm of 
special observation, but he formed his opinions on general 
questions early in life and seldom changed them. Thus, 
it is unlikely that the French Revolution shocked his 
serene faith in the ultimate truth of his political principles. 
Likewise, he came early to the belief that the proper defense 
of a free and virtuous people is in its militia rather than in 
trained soliders, an idea which was somewhat shaken by his 
unhappy Revolutionary experience, but which seems to 
have survived in him until the time of his Presidency. The 
ideal of a people rising spontaneously to defend its hearth- 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 201 

stones is one thing; the reality of a mob of untrained, half- 
armed farmers attempting to oppose regulars is sadly 
different. Jefferson never understood that efficiency in 
war, like efficiency in everything else, is only secured by 
preparation. 

For the first year of his governorship the democratic 
chief had no very serious problem to face. He discharged 
the duties of his office faithfully, working with great zeal 
to support the American armies, North and South. The 
fragmentary records show him busy over the many matters 
within his sphere. They also illustrate his fundamental in- 
capacity as an administrator in stormy times. The chief 
difficulty confronting the State in 1779 was that of raising 
money to meet the Continental requisitions and the ex- 
penses of the State government; heavy taxation was re- 
quired. A scientifically managed government might have 
handled the agricultural resources at its disposal so as to 
remain in a more or less sound condition, though the feat 
would have been difficult. The Virginia treasury was in 
great confusion, and administration while honest was un- 
economical; Virginia paper depreciated much more than 
was necessary, for the amount was not very great in com- 
parison with the wealth of the State. In order to meet the 
emergency, various financial expedients were tried, among 
them the confiscation of the estates of royalists and the 
debts due British merchants. But in order to enforce land 
sales, vigorous governmental action was imperative. This 
was not forthcoming, as Jefferson's letter to the assembly 
in October, 1779, shows: — 

It becomes my duty to guard the Assembly against relying 
in their calculations for any great & immediate supplies from 



202 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

hence, facts have come to our notice which give great reason to 
believe that the traverse and other pleadings justly allowed by 
the law for saving the rights of those who have real or probable 
appearance of right is perverted to frustrate or delay the effects, 
by being put in on grounds either frivolous or false and by that 
means throwing the subject into a course of legal contestation 
which under the load of business now in the doquet of the general 
court, may not be terminated in the present age, in one instance 
we are certified by the clerk of the general Court that the estate 
is claimed by the Steward: tho' this very man undertook to act 
as Commissioner of the Estate under the sequestration law by 
our api)ointment, & has himself personally rendered annual ac- 
counts to us of the ])roceeds of the estate as tlie estate of a 
British subject; yet his claim, palpably false as it is, in order to 
obtain the ceremony of being adjudged so, is to go through all 
the formalities of regular litigation, before the estate can be ex- 
posed to sale. ... I thought it my duty to guard the General 
Assembly against any deception in tlieir expectations from these 
funds. ' 

This letter is honorable to Jefferson in that it shows the 
republican magistrate determined to act with strict legality 
under all circumstances, but at the same time this fear of 
taking the initiative, this dependence upon the legislature 
for vigorous action in war-time had serious drawbacks. The 
governor could not or would not put pressure on the courts 
to proceed rapidly with the confiscation cases, and mean- 
time the State went lacking a fund which must come to it 
eventually and which was badly needed at the moment. 
Nothing could better show Jefferson's passion for legality 
and his incapacity for swift and direct means. 

The finances of the State were in bad condition. On 
May 20, 1780, sixteen counties of the sixty-odd had not 
* Executive communications, 1779. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 203 

paid the taxes due in the fall of 1779, and nine others liad 
returned no assessments, but had paid in i)art, while eight 
more liad neither returned assessments nor paid anything. 
In other words, thirty-three of the counties — half the 
State — had failed to meet their obligations, in si)ite of the 
fact that the demands made on Virginia for the sujjport 
of the Northern army were now supplemented by calls 
to aid the South. So bad was the financial situation that 
the committee of ways and means of the House of Dele- 
gates, on November 27, 1779, proposed radical retrench- 
ment : — 

The deranf^cd state of the army, and the ruinous situation of 
the navy, hath greatly enhanccul tlie expense of maintaining the 
one, & suhtraeted from that little defenee which was expeeted 
to be derived from the other; whilst the accumulated charge of 
both, creates an article of exi)enditure which hath already re- 
duced your finances to difficulty, and is too enormous to be 
supported. 

The committee recommended a reduction of the number 
of ships in the navy, of commands in the army and of 
officers, without a reduction in the number of privates. 
Recruiting was to cease and the existing force was to con- 
tinue at the least possible expense.^ 

Jefferson was thus forced to struggle with an economiz- 
ing legislature if he wished to increase or even save the 
Virginia military establishment. If he had so struggled 
and failed, the blame would not have been his, but the 
assembly's; as a matter of fact, he made no opposition, at 
least no recorded opi)osition, to this niggardly and suicidal 
folly. He cither bowed before the assembly's will, or, as is 
* Executive communications, 1779. 



204 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

likely, failed to realize the importance of building up the 
Virginia forces; or, as is possible, he believed that the 
American armies could not be supported while the local 
defense was strengthened. If so, he paid a great price for 
his mistake. 

Yet it must be noted in justice to him that he did what 
he could without taking any action vigorous or aggressive 
enough to produce genuine results. He worked to raise and 
equip recruits for the South, now seriously threatened by 
the British, and also attempted to establish a gun-factory 
on the James River of a size sufficient to supply the great 
demand for arms. He proposed to the governors of North 
and South Carolina to divide the great Cherokee hinter- 
land into three jurisdictions, in order effectually to suppress 
those troublesome Indians, a much more practical solution 
of frontier difficulties than the sending of expeditions by 
the individual States against the whole scattered nation. 
He wrote to the French minister assuring him that prepara- 
tion would be made to receive and support a French de- 
tachment in Virginia. In a letter to Samuel Huntingdon 
he enumerated the difficulties of providing an adequate 
force even for the guarding of the Saratoga prisoners : — 

We liave hitherto been unable to raise more than about the 
half of a Battalion of infantry for guarding the Convention 
Troops at the same Post. The defieieneies have been endeavored 
to he supplied with Militia. Congress have had too much experi- 
enee of the radical defects and inconveniences of militia service 
to need any enumerating them. Our assembly, now sitting, have 
in contemplation to put the garrison regiment on such a footing 
as gives us hopes of filling it by the next summer. In the mean- 
time a Battalion which we are raising for our immediate defence 
may be spared to do garrison duty this winter, and as but a small 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 205 

part of it is raised as yet, and not probable that it will be com- 
pleted within any short time, we sui)pose that with Co1(j. Taylor's 
regiment it will not exceed the number required to guard the 
Troops.^ 

Furthermore, Jefferson, on November 30, 1779, antici- 
pated his famous policy of later days by laying an embargo 
on provisions in order to avoid supplying the enemy and to 
secure food for the American armies. ^ This proclamation 
was in no wise a stretching of the gubernatorial authority, 
since the governor enjoyed a warrant from the assembly. 
In a letter to Congress about the same time he laid bare 
the pressing need of means of defense and apologized for 
retaining five thousand stands of arms intended for Con- 
gress, on the ground that they were sorely needed in Vir- 
ginia, where the arsenal had no more than three thousand 
muskets on hand. 

From this evidence it is apparent that Virginia was in a 
serious condition in 1779, both financially and from the 
point of view of military equipment, and while Jefferson 
zealously grappled with the great task to which he had been 
called, we lack in him any urgent realization of the dangers 
of the situation or knowledge of remedies. His messages to 
the assembly dealt with details, failing to convey what they 
should have accurately and forcefully done — an account 
of the weakness and unpreparedness of the State and pro- 
posals for drastic military measures. Jefferson enjoyed 
great influence with the legislature, which had elected him 
governor and looked to him for advice, and it probably 
would have extended his powers to meet the occasion or 
adopted effective means of raising money and supplies. 
1 Writings of Jefferson (Ford), ii, 277. « Ibid., u, 281. 



200 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Anyway, he should have pleaded for a stronger poliey, and 
he did not do so. 

Not only did the governor f;iil lo understand the State's 
danger; he also faile<l to introduce order into the adminis- 
tration. It is true tluit the eoloni.il systcMU had been slack 
and that Patrick Henry h;id done notliing to inaugurate 
better accounting and achninistrative methods, but Henry 
was an orator and Jefferson a man of affairs with a liking for 
details. Confusion reigned in the government. Accounts 
were badly kei)t, taxes went un])aid if pressure were needed 
to secure payment and were clumsily and expensively col- 
lected at best, the currency was ho|M'lessly (lc])reciated, the 
trooi)s and the navy ate large quantities of i)rovisions and 
drank hogsheads of taflia without being of much service; 
an army of commissaries and recruiting officers supported 
themselves on the State by sheer plunder. Perha])s the 
evils were too great to be remedied; perhaps Jefferson be- 
lieved that he lacked the legal right to bring order out of 
this chaos; at all events, he foimd out later to his cost that 
the people hold the executive res])onsil)le, however i>ower- 
less the constitution nuiy have endeavored to make him. 
It would have been a great, perhaps an imi)ossible, task to 
provide an adequate defense for the State, but Jefferson 
seems not to have nuide the effort. A situation is bad when 
all men feel it to be so and all men felt the situation to 
be bad in 1780. For one thing, elliciency in the military 
department was made impossible by the division t)f ad- 
ministration among several branches of government — the 
governor and council, the board of war and the assembly, 
which last alone had the power to do anything effective. 
The board of war, although entrusted with important 



TIIK FALL OF JEFFERSON 207 

executive functions, consisted of nu niipuid connnission of 
tliree men. This body, jiware of tlie ^rowinj^ eriticisni of 
military niuna^ernent, asked the House of I)ele^at(!s in 
Deceinher, 1775), for pay and anthority. "^rhereiipon tlic 
legislature voted the board of war salaries and ordered it 
to report to the governor, which it had not done formerly. 
These ehanges do not seem to have resulUsd in any improve- 
ment, and the board was abolisluul at the most (critical 
period of 178L Finally, military affairs w(;re turned (|ver 
to an ex-line officer, William Davics, who condncUid them 
with much more ability than liad been the case; before. 

Board of war and governor were incapable alike in war 
administration. It never seems to have occurred to 
Jefferson that a small, well-drille<i for(re would have been 
less ex])('nsivc and also much mon^ u.s(;ful than milili;i.; cer- 
tainly he did not suggest th(^ raising of snch a, body, lie 
complained, uulvxid, of tlu; diffienlty of securing rccTuits, 
but made no mention in 1770 of draughting, a power which 
the assembly had every right to exercise if the governor 
did not. lie seems to have thought no other military .system 
possible excej)t the old r)n(; of calling out (;rowds of the 
rawest militia when some action was impcTalivc, suj)[)lying 
thcTu with arms, which they usually f.iilcd to return, and 
suj)i)orting them by wasteful re(juisiliouirig. The militia 
called out for every alarm devoured ciuantities of food and 
rum which would have kei)t a small force pcrmancmtly fvA 
and in good-humor. 

Jefferson's action in Decem])er, 1779, when a rumor of a 
projected IJritish invasion reaclied him, ex])lains both his 
weakness as an exef;utive and tlu; reason for the total sur- 
prise he suffered just a year later at the time of Arnold's 



208 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

descent. Speaking of the rumored raid he wrote to the 
Speaker of the House : — 

It is our (hity to provide against every event and the Executive 
are accordingly engaged in concerting i)ropcr means of defence. 
Among otliers we tliink an immediate force from the militia to 
defend the post at York, and to take a i)roi)er post on the Sotilh 
side of James river, but the expence, the diflicullies which attend 
a general call of militia into tlie field, the disgust it gives tliem 
more especially when they find no enemy in place, and the ex- 
treme rigor of the season, induce us to refer to the decision of the 
general assembly, whether we shall on the intelligence already 
received & now communicated to them, call a competent force of 
militia to opi)ose the numbers of the enemy spoken of; or whether 
we shall make ready all orders & i)rci)are other circumstances, 
but omit actually issuing these orders till tlie enemy appear or 
we have further proof of their intentions? The Assembly will 
also please to determine whether, in ease the enemy should make 
a lodgment in the country, it would be expedient to avail our- 
selves of the laudable zeal which may prevail on their first land- 
ing and inlist a sufficient lumiber to oppose them & continue in 
service during the invasion or for any other term. Perhaps it may 
not be amiss to suggest to the assembly the tardiness of collect- 
ing even small numbers of men by divisions, that if any better 
method should occur to them they may prescribe it. The present 
state of the Treasury in more points than one, will no doubt be 
thought an absolute obstacle to every endeavor which may be 
necessary.* 

Here we have the executive asking the advice of the legis- 
lature as to proper war measures; it was a subject on which 
a body of politicians without military knowledge or ex- 
perience was not likely to prove illuminating. In April, 
1780, he wrote to Washington: — 
» Ford, II, 289. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 209 

The state of the recruiting business in this Country is as 
follows: There are some draughted soldiers in the difTerent parts 
of the Country, but they are so far, so disposed, & enlisted for so 
short a time that we have not thought them worth the expense 
of gathering up.* 

This defenseless and hopeless condition would have been 
excusable if inescapable. But in 1779-80, Virginia, while 
much reduced l)y the war, still possessed large resources, 
as the immense damage soon after inflicted by the British 
showed. There was still much tobacco, flour, and beef in 
the country, which the legislature, in the absence of money, 
might have requisitioned and sent to France in payment 
for arms; the enemy maintained no very effective blockade, 
and intercourse between Virginia and Europe was fairly 
safe. Certainly it was suicidal to await events without 
making the effort to secure men and arms. The fall of 
Charleston brought the menace of invasion nearer and cost 
the State her only efficient troops, surrendered with the 
garrison. The assembly, realizing at last the critical con- 
dition of Virginia, passed vigorous acts; the cavalry regi- 
ments and the Continental quota were ordered filled by 
militia draughts, and the governor was given authority to 
call twenty thousand militia into the field — one half of 
the available number — in case the State should be in- 
vaded. He was also empowered to impress provisions and 
other articles, to lay an embargo and provide magazines 
and public stores — in short, his powers were increased to 
such an extent that efficiency in the government might be 
hoped for. The assembly exacted still heavier taxes and 
ground out new emissions of pai)er money to swell the mass 
» Ford, 11, 301. 



210 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

of worthless currency. For the encouraging of these ef- 
forts Washington sent one of his subordinates, Muhlen- 
berg, from the Continental army. This officer, a man of 
some energy, exerted himself to collect recruits and is said 
to have first suggested a conscription law to the Virginia 
government,^ which later adopted it. Chesterfield Court- 
House, the training-camp, soon contained a number of 
recruits of fairly good quality, though lackmg supplies and 
clothing. The assembly decided to draught three thousand 
men, who were sorely needed after the fall of Charleston 
and the loss of the Virginia line. 

Jefferson's correspondence through this period shows him 
to have been hard-workmg, zealous, and generally sensible, 
and his eagerness to pay Congressional requisitions was 
noteworthy. But his strict constitutionalism hampered his 
whole course. In spite of his enlarged powers, he thought 
that every measure of importance must have the sanction 
of the assembly, and the assembly could not be summoned 
every few weeks in special session in order to legalize his 
acts. "The time necessary for convening the legislature 
of such a State," he wrote, "adds to the tardiness of the 
remedy, and the measure itself is so oppressive on the 
members as to discourage the attempting it, but in the last 
emergencies." Untiring and honest as Jefferson was, he 
lacked the quality of assuming responsibility in a crisis; he 
needed outside initiative and bolstering up. 

Gates's defeat at Camden in September, 1780, came as a 
heavy blow to the government; the Virginia militia was 
scattered to the winds with great loss of arms and equip- 
ment. The militia exhibited such agility in getting off the 

* H. A. Muhlenberg's Life oj Major-General Peter Muhlenberg, 187. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 211 

field that few of them, unfortunately, were killed. The 
Virginia magazine was practically stripped at this time, but 
Congress stepped into the breach with a loan of three thou- 
sand muskets. Shortly after the battle Jefferson wrote to 
Gates : " We shall exert every nerve to assist you in every 
way in our power, being as we are without any money in ye 
Treasmy, or any prospect of more till the Assembly meets 
in Octr." ^ Under such circumstances a called session might 
have been advisable, for the danger was pressing. Indeed, 
the government of Jefferson to be ejQBcient demanded either 
a continuous session of the assembly, or a very great and 
definite increase in the governor's authority. A born execu- 
tive would have demanded or assumed power, but Jefferson 
could not bring himself to this aggression. His constitu- 
tional scruples or a certain indecision of character pre- 
vented him. 

In the middle of October, 1780, Virginia became a scene 
of invasion, when a British force landed at Portsmouth 
and advanced tentatively inland. Muhlenberg, with such 
recruits as he was able to collect, together with a militia 
command of about one thousand men under Thomas 
Nelson, Jr., headed the only defense of the State. The 
preacher-general, however, by energetic efforts succeeded 
at last in getting togetTier a tolerably respectable array 
of several thousand men, sufficiently imposing in size to 
check the enemy, who appeared reluctant to leave their 
base very far in the rear. The moral of Muhleijberg's suc- 
cessful levy is that the people of Virginia, despite the dis- 
illusioning effects of prolonged war and the government's 
lack of force and character, were not actually averse from 
> Ford, n, 33S. 



212 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

military' service and could still be rallied to the standards 
in considerable numbers by popular and energetic officers, 
provided they were allowed abundance of time. But it was 
even more apparent that the Virginia militia could not be 
got into the field in time to check a quickly conducted raid 
into the interior. This lesson the British put into practice 
the following year. 

The invader Leslie finally sailed away, giving the State a 
brief breathing-spell. Breathing-spell it could only be, for 
the intention of carrying the war into Virginia was so ap- 
parent that William Lee, writing from Europe, had warned 
Jefferson of it. But notwithstanding the fact that a return 
of the enemy was practically assured and might be looked 
for at any moment, nothing was done to provide a per- 
manent force of troops; the whole militia gathering was 
allowed to go home. It must be added, though, that the 
difficulty of keeping militia in the field more than a few 
weeks was very great. This was largely due to an absolute 
want of understanding of war. Men called into the army 
nowadays go expecting to serve for some time; men in the 
Revolutionary days went out to shoot their blunderbusses 
and rifles at the enemy if there chanced to be an enemy and 
then expected to return home to get in the hay. Having no 
knowledge of war, they could not understand that it might 
be well to stay in service and learn something about it. As 
the militia could only be brought out with difficulty and 
after some time, and as the government had absolutely 
nothing else to depend on in case of need, a speedy courier 
service was essential; it must get intelligence of a raid at 
the earliest possible hour. This courier service was needed 
in only one line, from Hampton Roads to Richmond, be- 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 213 

cause the enemy could not make a sudden descent excejit 
by Cliesu,i)eiike Bay. A j)urlial and ini])crfect intcllij^cnce 
system liad existed earlier, but Jefferson discontinued it, so 
that the government had no oth(T means of f^ainin/^ infor- 
mation than what j)rivate j)atriotism might suj)i)ly. 'J'h(; 
governor's attention was drawn, in the closing weeks of 
1780, to a distant and, under the circumstances, imprac- 
tical operation — George Rogers Clark's proposed expedi- 
tion against Detroit. This was designed primarily as a 
defensive measure for the frontier, but the frontier, while 
harassed by the Indians, was in nothing like so nmch 
danger as the east, where an English army might aj)pcar 
at any moment. 

The blow fell at last, taking Jefferson, as might have been 
expected, quite unawares. He received information that a 
fleet liad been seen off Willoughby Point two days l>efore.^ 
The news did not come dirf^ctly to the gov<'rnor, but to 
Thomas Nelscm, who intermitt(;ntly commanded tln^ mili- 
tia when it was in the i'nM and lived (juietly at honu; in 
the intervals. Jefferson, uncertain whether the fleet was 
French or British, procrastinated several days and failed to 
issue a militia call until January 2, when he got definitt; 
intelligences that the ships were hostik;. If, as in Octo])er, 
1780, lh(; British had waltcA in the vicinity of Norfolk for 
a week or two and engaged in robbing near-by plantations, 
— which was j)roba!>ly what Jefferson expected, — there 
would have been time enough to raise a force of militia and 
give it a crude organization. But Benedict Arnold, who 
c:ommanded tlu; detachment, upset all calculations by mov- 
ing up the James River with sudi celerity as to reveal the 
' Ford. n. 302. 



214 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

utter unprcparcdness of Virginia. On January 4, 1781, the 
enemy ncarcd Richmond, and now that it was too hite 
Jefferson made hurried demands for the miUtia of whole 
counties, besides workinj^ hard to save the stores in town. 
He even had a horse fall under him from fatigue. The next 
day, January 5, the British reached the capital of Virginia, 
which they plundered for two days; when they had finished, 
they fell back down the James. Several thousand militia 
had at length gathered, a force which might have saved 
Richmond if raised a few days earlier, as Arnold's com- 
mand was small and com])osed of inferior troops. The 
enemy, without meeting molestation, slowly withdrew to 
Portsmouth, where they encamped. They left behind them 
not only ruin, but bitter humiliation. Jefferson had, with- 
out doubt, done his best, but tluit was not all that a clear- 
headed man of action might have done. "For want of in- 
telligence," he wrote, "may be ascribed a groat part of, if 
not the whole of the Enemy's late successful incursions to 
this place." ^ But, obviously, the government was at fault 
in not securing the means of gaining intelligence. In war 
the enemy does not come with letters of introduction. 

To provide for tlie invasion the governor had ordered out 
militia from twenty -three coimtics, amounting on paper to 
nearly five thousand men, though arms were lacking for a 
large number. Baron Steuben had now superseded Muh- 
lenberg as Continental commander in the State, but this 
was not an especially fortunate change; the foreign soldier 
did not imdersland the j)eculiaritics of the native Virginian 
and was more of a drillmaster than general or adniinislra- 
tor. Arnold had established himself at I'ortsmouth and was 
» Ford, n, 417. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 215 

always to be feared; fortunately for the Americans, the 
British commander-in-chief j)rcferrcd an arrogant, thick- 
headed rcguhilion oflicer hke PliiHips to the briUiunt 
traitor. Notwithstanding the grave danger threatening 
the State and the chaotic condition of things in Virginia, 
Jefferson wrote, on January 16, 1781: "It shall be my en- 
deavor to suffer this invasion to divert as httle as possible 
of our Supplies for the Southern Army." ^ This sentiment 
was eminently patriotic, but not equally practical. Indeed, 
one of the most trenchant criticisms passed on JcfFerson was 
that he sacrificed the Statt; for the sake of the Southern 
army, which was so far true that Virginia, after the junc- 
tion of Arnold and ('ornwallis, was in greater immediate 
danger than the South. The conquest of Virginia in 1781, 
witli her resources, would probably have meant the down- 
fall of the American cause. Overmastering circumstances 
comi)elled Jefferson to give first plac;e to home needs, and 
on January 19 he directed the manager of the lead mines to 
send all the lead on hand to Richmond instead of one half 
to the South as he had previously ordered.^ Even in the 
crisis Jefferson the legalist showed forth. The assembly had 
passed an act for requisitioning food, clothing, and wagons 
within a certain time limit. This limit had expired when 
the governor, in disregard, wrot<i to the leading magistrates 
in tlui various counties directing tlie levying of thc^ rcfjuisi- 
tion in case the supplies had not yet been jirocured: — 

Could any legal scruples arise as to tliis th(;re wouhJ he no 

doubt that the ensuing A.sseni))iy influenetMl by the necessity that 

induced them to press the Act would give their Sanction t«> its 

Execution though at a later Date than is prescribed. . . . The 

1 Governor 'a Letter-Book (1781), 26. '•' Ibid.. 43. 



216 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Time of doing this is a Circumstance only and the Principle is 
sound both in Law and Policy. Substance and Circumstance is 
to be regarded whUe we have so many Foes in our bowels and 
environing us on every Side. He is a bad citizen who can enter- 
tain a doubt whether the law will justify him in saving his Coun- 
try or who will Scruple to risk himself ia support of the spirit 
of a Law where unavoidable Accidents have prevented a literal 
compliance with it. 

So far Jefferson would go in illegality, but no farther. On 
January 23, 1781, he ordered a meeting of the assembly for 
March 1, 1781, instead of the date to which it stood ad- 
journed, with an explanation of the critical condition of 
affairs and the desperate need of money and troops.^ Some 
legislative aid, he declared, was necessary for the enforce- 
ment of the acts for securing recruits and supplies. Acts 
upon acts needed to enforce anything do not bespeak a 
strong administration. 

He presently gave another illustration of his dependence 
on the assembly, which was more commendable in peace 
than in the midst of a war ever growing more doubtful 
and dangerous. The State's crying need was a regular mili- 
tary force, and efforts to fill this want, including conscrip- 
tion, had failed, partially because the government would 
do nothing harsh. A former officer in the Continental line, 
Alexander Spotswood, now came forward with a plan for 
raising a mixed command of infantry and cavalry for the 
State service under Continental regulations. This legion 
was to be called into the field for an indefinite period for in- 
struction and in case of actual invasion, but should remain 
at home on furlough when not needed.^ The plan might not 
have worked, but it offered a great advantage over the 
* Ford, 11, 434. ^ Executive ('(,mmuiiications, 1781. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 217 

militia system by providing a well-equipped force prepared 
to remain in service for a considerable length of time, and 
at least it deserved a trial in the absence of better sugges- 
tions. But Jefferson wrote Spotswood: — 

I received your favour containing a proposition for raising a 
Legion for the defence of the State: as there are several parts of 
it which are beyond the powers of the executive to stipulate I 
shall do myself the pleasure of laying it before the Genl. Assembly 
whom we have been obliged to convene on the first of March 
next.^ 

Thus was cold water thrown on a plan which might have 
furnished the State an organization of some value in the 
trying times soon to follow. Apparently Jefferson did not 
understand that a delay of a month or two in war-time may 
be a serious matter; he could not be unconstitutional in 
any emergency. 

The following weeks were full of labor for him. Greene 
and Cornwallis steadily moved towards Virginia and it was 
evident that another and much more serious invasion was 
imminent. Jefferson made every exertion to strengthen 
Greene; he summoned the militia in great numbers to join 
the latter and abandoned conscription for the Continental 
army in the mean while. The government supplied the 
levies with necessaries under an act imposing a tax levied in 
tobacco and provisions. At the same time the militia of the 
eastern counties was called to Williamsburg to cooperate 
with the French, who had put in their appearance in 
Chesapeake Bay. The executive message to the assembly 
when it met in March, 1781, outlined the situation, but 
made no pressing recommendations. The legislature quite 
1 Letter-Book (1781), 61. 



218 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

failed to rise to the need, merely ordering the raising of two 
legions on Sjjotswood's j)lan and creating more paper 
money. Jefferson, who realized the danger little better than 
the lawmakers, seems to have been satisfied with this 
entirely inadequate provision. On March 3, 1781, he 
showed that he had failed to grasp the situation in a letter 
he wrote to the North Carolina assembly : — 

I assure you tliat wc have been so very far from entertaining 
an idea of witlioldiug succours from you on account of the invasion 
of our State that it liad l)een determined that the regular Troops 
raised & not at that time marc;lied should nevertheless proceed 
to your assistance & that we would oppose the Army in our own 
country with militia.* 

This policy, wise enough as long as Greene stood between 
Virginia and Cornwallis, became highly disadvantageous 
when Greene elected to march South and leave Virginia to 
the defense of the militia, which even Jefferson by this time 
had somewhat lost faith in. 

The governor, aware that affairs were anything but 
right, did not know how to better them. He himself ex- 
plained to Lafayette the weakness of his government when 
the latter was ordered to Virginia as the Continental com- 
mander there : — 

Mild Laws, a People not used to prompt obedience, a want of 
provisions of War & means of procuring them render our orders 
often ineffectual, oblige us to temporize & when w'e cannot 
accomplish our object in one way to attempt it in another.^ 

"Oblige us to temporize!" This is a picture of the 
democratic leader afraid of sternness rather than of the 
strong executive who uses severe remedies for desperate 
• Ford. n. 479. « Ibid., u, 493. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 219 

diseases. As a matter of fact, the temper of the people until 
the beginning of 1781 was generally loyal, and sacrifices 
were often willingly made. Illustrating this is a stateiricnt 
of Jefferson's, made to Richard Henry Lee in connection 
with the power of requisitioning horses given a certain 
quartermaster: — 

lie applied for militia to aid him in the execution of the powers. 
We knew that an armed force to imj)ress horsc^s was nnne(;essary 
as it was new. Tlie fact has been, that our citizens, so far from 
requiring an arrne<] foret; f(jr this purj)ose, liave parted from their 
horses too easily, !)y deHv(;ring tli(;m to every man who .said he 
was riding on public business, and assumed a right of impressing.* 

And several months later, on May 30, 1781, Major John 
Nelson wrote Jefferson : — 

When in Carolina, I did myself the honor to write to you 
resp(!cting the 4th Troop of Horse wliicli was originally voted to 
be raised for my Corps, & afterwards disban<led; the Want of 
Cavalry at present induces me, ontre more, to rcfpiest that it may 
now be recnaited; whicli I will undertake to do in a little Time; 
as there never was a Period, since the Commencement of the War, 
that Men might be got with so much Ease.* 

The fact seems to be that the Virginia government might 
have raised a small force for indefinite service despite its 
straits for money, if it had gone about the thing system- 
atically and energetically. 

Rut the brief calm before the storm of genuine invasion 
was not utilized for any material strengthening of the de- 
fense, which continued to be the old hand-to-mouth, hai)j)y- 
go-lucky method, effective only against a weak and inactive 
enemy. The custom was to call out a force of militia on the 
* Ford, n, 495. * Executive commumcations, 1781. 



220 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

news of any movement of the British, supply them with 
arms and equipment, which were usually carried off at the 
end of the service and never seen again, pay them at the 
rate of Continental troops in treasury certificates, feed 
them by requisitioning provisions, and furnish transporta- 
tion by impressing wagons and horses. When the enemy 
relapsed into quiescence, the militia went home and the 
horses and wagons returned to their owners. Any thought 
of keeping the militia in the field beyond the need of the 
moment and until they might become sufficiently trained 
to be of use for some known military purpose apparently 
never entered Jefferson's head. The militia system, which 
was bad enough at best, but defensible on the plea of neces- 
sity, was made more ineffective by want of intelligence on 
the part of the government in handling it. At times when a 
raid developed into an invasion, requiring the presence of 
soldiers in the field for a campaign, the levies first called out 
and becoming somewhat seasoned were discharged and re- 
placed by raw recruits fresh from the plough. "The great 
length of Time which the Militia had been in the Field," 
Jefferson wrote on March 31, 1781, "who were first called 
on induced us in the Discontinuance of the Enterprize 
against Portsmouth immediately to call so many Militia 
as . . . with those lately called might make up a proper 
opposing Force. I state the whole in the Margin who are 
to be considered as Reliefs to the former Militia." ^ 
Jefferson fluctuated at this juncture between calling out 
large portions of the militia of certain counties, or requir- 
ing small draughts from the militia of all the counties to 
form a more permanent body. He should not have hesi- 
» Letter-Book (1781), 223. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 221 

tated a moment; the superior efficiency of even small 
numbers of men having the character of a regular military 
force over hosts of militia is one of the commonest lessons 
of war, and the custom of calling out the militia of various 
counties in turn for short period service, called "tours of 
duty," was the worst that could be devised. Yet Jefferson 
clung to this mode of warfare, writing Muhlenberg, on 
Aprils, 1781: — 

The Men under your Command who have been in the field from 
the beginning of the Invasion, having served a Tour of Duty 
unusually long, I am anxious to have them satisfied of the Acci- 
dents which have as yet prevented their relief, ... I think myself 
particularly obliged to acknowledge the patient Service of those 
who have been so long from Home, and am anxious that they 
should know that this has not proceeded from any previous 
Intention of Government, but from the Circumstances before 
explained. 

In spite of this unenlightened attitude of the government, 
which could not afford to be considerate in such a crisis, 
Steuben collected a considerable body of militia and con- 
scripts and endeavored with much labor and many robust 
German oaths to beat them into some kind of shape. They 
were soon needed, for in the latter part of April, 1781, 
Phillips and Arnold, ascending the James River, took 
Petersburg and threatened Richmond. Steuben's impos- 
ing show of force along the Henrico Heights, aided by La- 
fayette's small command of Continentals just arrived, so 
impressed the British that they fell back down the river 
without making an attack. The relief was momentary. 
The full storm of invasion was about to burst on Virginia, 
for Cornwallis, who had advanced from North Carolina, 



222 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

marched on Petersburg, where the minor army joined him. 
The united body then turned towards Richmond, and 
the assembly adjourned on May 10, 1781, to meet in Char- 
lottesville on May 24. Lafayette, who now commanded 
in Virginia, was obliged to retreat with his motley force of 
Continentals and militia before Cornwallis. He continually 
applied to Jefferson for reinforcements, but the governor 
could no longer supply them. The latter demanded troops 
from the counties in vain; the men would not respond. " If 
the calls on the latter," he wrote Lafayette, "do not pro- 
duce SuiBScient Reinforcements to you I shall candidly ac- 
knowledge that it is not in my power to do any Thing more 
than to represent to the General Assembly that unless they 
can provide more effectually for the Execution of the Laws 
it will be vain to call on Militia." ^ 

True enough, the temper of the people, under the aggra- 
vation of invasion and the helplessness of the government 
to offer resistance, was becoming dangerous, and in Rock- 
bridge there was a mutiny, which seems to have partly 
resulted from Jefferson's hesitation to enforce the con- 
scription law. Samuel McDowell, the county-lieutenant, 
reported to the governor on May 9, 1781 : — 

The Act of October last, for raising this States quota of troops 
for the Continental Army, came to this Comity in due time tlie 
Districts were laid off, two or three of the Districts Procured their 
men for the War, a day was appointed for the Draft, but before 
the day came, your Excellencys letter allowing a suspension of 
that Act, in this County, came to hand, and before your Excel- 
lencys letter arrived, for taking off that Suspension, the day ap- 
pointed for tlie Draft was Past. On Receiving your last letter, 
Some of the field officers were of opinion that Districts ought to 
1 Ford, ni, 38. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 223 

be laid off a new, for some reasons; and a Day was appointed 
to meet to lay them off it was (in consideration) found necessary, 
the People in this Country, (hearing that they of Augusta had 
Prevented laying off the Districts there) met (to-wit) almost a 
hundred of them, and Seeing Colo Bowyer getting the lists from 
the Capts; of the Strength of their Companies, and Supposing it 
was to lay off the Districts anew, got into the Court House 
Seased the table, carried it off in a Riotous manner; and said no 
Districts should be laid off there, for that they would Serve as 
militia for three months and make up the Eighteen months that 
way, but would not be Drafted for Eighteen months and be 
regulars . . . they tore the Papers and after some time began to 
go off.* 

Similar outbreaks in other counties, west and east, 
showed that the spirit of obedience to authority was rapidly 
weakening throughout Virginia. The people had become 
more disheartened than at any period of the war and 
Jefferson's administration had lost all the influence and 
popularity it once possessed. 

Apparently he was conscious that his management had 
proved a failure. Writing to Washington, on May 28, 1781, 
shortly before the expiration of his term of office, he said: — 

A few days will bring me that relief which the constitution has 
prepared for those oppressed with the labours of my office and a 
long declared resolution of relinquishing it to abler hands has 
prepared my way for retirement to a private station.^ 

He had been zealous, conscientious, and exceedingly 
industrious, and so far was the picture of the rcpuV>lican 
magistrate as he loved to dream it, but still he had not suc- 
ceeded in the difficult position of war executive, with its 
demands of clear insight and forcible action, and the weight 
' Executive communications, 1781. * Ford, iii, 43. 



224 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

of public opinion was against him. Or, as Jefferson put it 
in his memoirs: — 

From a beUef that under the pressure of the invasion under 
which we were then laboring, the public would have more con- 
fidence in a military chief, and that the military commander, 
being invested with civil power also, both might be wielded with 
more energy, promptitude and effect for the defence of the State, 
I resigned the administration at the end of my second year.^ 

It was a confession of defeat. Jefferson retired at the 
height of invasion and in the face of a perfect storm of 
hostile contention; for the time being his influence was 
dead. The assembly, driven from Richmond by Corn- 
wallis and from Charlottesville by Tarleton, hastened over 
the mountains to Staunton, endeavoring to find some way 
to save the State. The natural and obvious means sug- 
gesting itself was to strengthen the powers of the governor 
at the expense of the constitution, or to appoint a dictator, 
as some preferred to call it. Jefferson bitterly opposed this 
plan. 

The very thought alone [he wrotel was treason against the 
people; was treason against mankind in general: as rivetting for- 
ever the chains which bow down their necks by giving to their 
oppressors a proof, which they would have trumpeted through 
the universe, of the imbecility of republican government, in 
times of pressing danger, to shield them from harm.^ 

But the weakness of republican government in a crisis 
had already been displayed, or, more properly, the weak- 
ness of the Virginia constitution, and a temporary dicta- 
torship was rather in the nature of a remedy than of a 
reversion. Henry was suggested as dictator, along with 
1 Randall, i, 346. * Ford, in, 234. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 225 

Washington and Greene and perhaps others, but the 
scheme failed. Jefferson states that it " wanted a few votes 
only of being passed," though the Journal shows no record 
of any kind on the subject. Possibly Jefferson was thinking 
of the committee of the whole rather than of the official 
action of the House of Delegates. It was to this dictator- 
ship party that Randall credits the criticisms of Jefferson 
nearly ending in his impeachment: the biographer would 
have us believe that these criticisms were designed for the 
purpose of getting rid of Jefferson and making way for the 
dictator. Such a statement carries its own refutation. The 
fact that Virginia had been mercilessly raided by the enemy 
for a year without being able to make the least retaliation 
and was now in actual danger of subjugation amply ex- 
plains the criticisms of the executive; it would have been 
extraordinary if he had not come in for wholesale condem- 
nation. 

To give point and shape to the attack on Mr. Jefferson 
[Randall goes on to say] to give it popular effect, charges were 
thrown out against his official conduct, on the floor, at the legis- 
lative meeting at Staunton, and an inquiry into his conduct was 
demanded. George Nicholas, one of the members from Mr. 
Jefferson's own county, a very honest, but at that time a very 
young and impulsive man, was the spokesman on this occasion.^ 

Nicholas, it should be noted, was not a conservative, but 
a man of democratic leanings, who later became one of the 
principal followers of Jefferson and Madison. What could 
be a stronger proof of the intense dissatisfaction with 
Jefferson's rule existing at the moment than that such a 
man should move an investigation? On June 12, 1781, the 
1 Randall, i, 351. 



226 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

House of Delegates "Resolved, That at the next session 
of Assembly an inquiry be made into the conduct of the 
Executive of this State for the last twelve months." ^ This 
extract from the Journal sounds brief and bald, but it is in 
reality of high importance. Jefferson then commanded in 
Virginia something of that idolatrous regard which he later 
received from the nation as a whole. The vote of censure, 
therefore, was vastly more significant in his case than it 
would have been in that of an ordinary official ; it was the 
people turning against their tribune. 

This was the low-water mark of Jefferson's career. With 
his admirers turning against him what might he hope for 
in the future ? For the moment he was saved by a combi- 
nation of circumstances. Few of the conservatives were 
present in this House of Delegates of less than sixty mem- 
l)ers; they were mostly at home in the east where the in- 
vasion raged. Again, the pressure of war made a lengthy 
investigation impossible just then and it was postponed to 
what was hoped would prove a more leisured season. Be- 
sides, Jefferson still had followers who were faithful to the 
death and they worked for him. Thus, the democratic 
chieftain escaped the danger immediately threatening him, 
but with prestige quite gone; for the time being the man 
who had been revered because he expressed the ideals of his 
age better than any other man suffered the imputation of 
lacking ordinary capacity in affairs. On the same day of 
the investigation motion, June V2, 1781, Jefferson's suc- 
cessor was elected. Randall and Girardin, both writing 
under Jefferson's inspiration years afterwards when the 
democrat had fully come into his own, labor to show that he 
» Journal, House of Delegates (May, 1781), 15. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 227 

might have been elected governor by the assembly for the 
third successive year allowed by the constitution if he had 
so desired — nay, more, that he was actually obliged to per- 
suade delegates to vote against himself in order to obtain 
a majority for Thomas Nelson. Says Randall: — 

Jefferson's friends insisted on reelecting him. His confidential 
friends (those who understood his feelings and unalterable de- 
terminations) strenuously opposed this on the ground that he had 
patriotically divested himself of his office to heal divisions in the 
Legislature, and that he ought to be allowed to carry out hia 
wishes; and that now, accusations having been brought against 
him and a hearing agreed upon, his honor required him to meet 
his assailants without the advantage of official position. These 
considerations induced a considerable body of his friends to vote 
for General Nelson, and it required their votes, in addition to 
those of the recent advocates of another man, to elect Mr. 
Jefferson's candidate over himself.* 

This may be a partially truthful statement of the case, 
for no man ever inspired deeper devotion than Jefferson, 
but at best it is highly colored. It seems probable that the 
governor did not desire reelection; but it also appears al- 
most certain that he could not have been reelected if he had. 
His open candidacy in all likelihood would have brought to 
a head the threatened investigation of his administration, 
from which, in the irritated and unjust state of the public 
mind, he must have emerged with small credit. With his 
customary adroitness he made the most of a trying situa- 
tion by declaring that he gave way, or "resigned," as he 
afterwards expressed it, in favor of a man conversant with 
military affairs. Nevertheless, Jefferson received some 
votes in the senate, although Thomas Nelson, Jr., was 
> Randall, i. 352. 



228 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

easily elected governor to succeed him. Nelson's election 
was something in tlie nature of a revolution; for the first 
time since the establishment of the Commonwealth a con- 
servative held the chief place. First Patrick Henry, then 
Jefferson, — and after him his favorites might have been 
expected to succeed, as later in the presidential succession, 
but his failure as an executive changed the course of politics. 
In the emergency the assembly chose an amateur soldier 
believed to be able to cope with the emergency without 
regard to his views on the rights of man. That Jefferson 
should have been replaced by one not his follower is the best 
evidence of the magnitude of his defeat. The leader retired 
to one of his farms, thoroughly discredited for the time and 
no doubt with gloomy thoughts as to the future. Nor was 
his decline a temporary affair, as the Jeffersonian hero- 
worshipers maintain. He returned to Congress the fall 
after and went abroad as a minister for several years, thus 
cutting loose from Virginia politics while the humiliations 
the State had endured under his rule remained a matter of 
fresh remembrance. 

The effect of his removal from Virginia was remarkable. 
The democratic party was for the time being overborne 
by the conservatives, now under the leadership of Patrick 
Henry and Richard Henry Lee, who had parted company 
with Jefferson and abandoned progressive policies. The 
conservative Benjamin Harrison was elected governor to 
succeed Nelson, who resigned after Yorktown. Lee and 
Henry disputed the leadership of the assembly for two 
years, and then in 1784 joined hands in an attempt to stay 
the progress of liberalism by establishing state support of 
religion. The conservative party, which had revived in the 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 229 

reaction following Jefferson's overthrow, gave the pro- 
gramme hearty support and a most exciting and impor- 
tant political struggle followed. It, indeed, proved to be a 
turning-point in the history of Virginia. The conservatives 
failed, beaten by the spirit of the age rather than by the 
skill of their opponents. Jefferson, whose name was re- 
membered as the first great advocate of social reform, 
returned from France to find his party more powerful 
than ever and his own failure as an administrator for- 
gotten. 

Strange — the logic of history. Thomas Nelson, Jeffer- 
son's successor, proved to be the man for the crisis. He was 
a commonplace planter of some small military knowledge, 
much energy and great devotion to duty, and further was 
not handicapped by any especial veneration for the consti- 
tution. Although the assembly at Staunton invested the 
governor with greatly enlarged powers, including the right 
to call out the State forces at pleasure, impress every- 
thing necessary for military purposes, control the quarter- 
master's department, banish disaffected persons and con- 
stitute special courts, it was felt that Nelson had exceeded 
his warrant. He had acted with rough vigor, getting into 
the field a large number of militia, and, what was of more 
importance, raising subsistence for the French-American 
army at the siege of Yorktown. Later in the fall, when the 
surrender of Cornwallis had removed the danger threaten- 
ing the State, the assembly legalized Nelson's administra- 
tion, which had plainly been unconstitutional.^ He had 
been in effect what some people wanted to make Patrick 
Henry in 1770 and again in 1781 — a military dictator. He 
» Hening, x, 478. 



230 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

had seized supplies and necessaries wherever he found them 
without regard to that constitutional check, the council, 
which Jefferson had always so scrupulously consulted in his 
acts; he had, in short, considered nothing but the imme- 
diate need of the hour. And he had been successful. On 
the other hand, Jefferson was associated with the greatest 
humiliation Virginia has ever known, and Virginians are 
proud. The State has suffered invasion and on a far greater 
scale than in 1781, but never again what it suffered then — 
war without honor. The people grew indignant when they 
saw a small force of the enemy marching and plundering 
with absolute impunity, and the government flying from 
place to place before a troop of cavalry. Nelson had come 
into power at this time of depression and within a few 
months led the State forces in person to the glorious victory 
of Yorktown. 

Military reputation is undoubtedly one of the greatest 
of American political assets. It would not have been won- 
derful then if Jefferson had fallen into obscurity and lived 
out his life in retirement and Nelson won lasting accession 
to office. Just the reverse happened. Nelson resigned the 
governorship late in 1781 and never appeared in the politi- 
cal field again. Jefferson returned to Virginia, a political 
prophet of unlimited influence, and it was his predomi- 
nance in Virginia which afterwards enabled him to become 
the founder of the Democratic Party and the third Presi- 
dent. All his mistakes and disasters were forgotten, only 
his reforms recalled. He could afford to wait in France, far 
from his native heath, until the time came for him to return 
into his own. He had no need to fight his way back to 
power and popularity, for his earlier career worked for him. 



THE FALL OF JEFFERSON 231 

It was not to his activity, not to his political acuteness, not 
to his services in Washington's government that the great 
democrat owed his rehabilitation and mastery, but to the 
"Zeitgeist." He was identified with one of the great move- 
ments of the human sj)irit, and this l)eing so, his past fail- 
ure, with all its gall, was put out of remembrance. For had 
he not written : " We hold these truths to be self-evident, 
that all men are created e(iual ; that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among 
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"? 



CHAPTER IX 

SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 

While loyalism was conspicuous in the cast at tlic be- 
ginning of tlie war, it hardly made an ai)j)carance in tlie 
west until the i)rol()ngati()n of the struggle began to try the 
patience of tlu; p(!ople. At first the frontier enthusiastically 
favored the Revolution and sent a large number of riflemen 
to swell the patriot forces. But the pressure of war, the in- 
terru[)tion of trade, the heavy taxes collected from back- 
woodsmen unaccust(mied to i)ay taxes, the worthlessness of 
the currency, and the vjirious Tory influen(;es brought to 
hear gradually taintcul the country bordering on western 
North Carolina and made some impression on the whole 
mountain region. In 1775 and 1776 Toryism was practi- 
cally non-existent in the west, but as 1777 wore away with- 
out l)ringing success to the American arms, the western 
country began to sliow the effects of doubt and (hscouragc- 
mcnt. Hamilton's loyulist proclamations, sent out from 
Detroit all along the frontier, made waverers, and British 
agents carried the royal oath of allegiance through the back 
settlements of Virginia and Pennsylvania and found many 
timid subscribers. 

In Augusta William Hinton raised a band of seventy- 
five men, to whom he administered the British oath.^ On 
August bS, 1777, Hinton visiird the house of one David 
Harned with some armed followers and indulged in much 
1 Virginia Gazette, October 29, 1777. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 'Z'M 

lr('tis()iial)lc ^iiscoiiiulc, declaring' "liiiiisclf in I'avor of lli<r 
crown of (iln'al Britain and lliat (Jmcral Ilovvc nii^lil as 
well ^o lioint! with liis nu-n, for lu; could raise ni<'n cnouf^li to 
subject the country and that he would do it yet." Mililia 
dlsi)erscd Ilinton's force and arrested the ringU;ader, who 
was wounded in the fray, tof^etlier with several foHowers. 
Auj^iista court scntcnc<ul Martin Oydcr, John ('ryder, and 
Ilinton, the worst oH'cndcrs, to fiiu's aiul prison terms (ff 
several y«!ars. it a]>|)ears lUv, court <h<l not enforce th(;s<; 
sentences iti full, hut n;h%*iscd the prisoners aft<'r a salutary 
term in jail.' The conri tric<l scvcrjil oIIkt cases of dis- 
afTection. On Sc.'ptiunhcr 10, 1777, John An^luT was made 
to take the oath of allegiance and hound to grxxl hehavior 
for a ye;i.r, for 'Misalfcction to the C'oiinnonwcidth," and on 
the foliowinf^ diiy Ah-xntidcr Miller, fornK'rly a, I'rcshyti;- 
rian minister, was lined Cl(M) and sentenc(ul to two y<^ars' 
inii)risonment. 

About the same time loyalists gathered in som<^ rnnnlKTS 
near Cheat River in Monongalia, but w(!r(; dispersed by a 
militia force under the connnand of Zac;kw(^ll Morgan. 
After tlu? skirmish the militia wisluul to hatig their prison- 
ers, but were [)r(;vent(^d, though tla^ 'I ory leader lligginson 
lost his life in a ra,ther obscun; way. 1 [<^ was crossing ( Micjit 
River as a prison<M- in irons uiid<'r I he charg<' of Morgan and 
several others, wlaai la; cilhcr fell out of the boat, or was 
thrown out, and drowned.'' Popular o[)inion charged 
Morgan with murd<!r and Ik; was tried; a probably .somcr- 
what partial jury acfpiittcil him. In I)c(;cmbcr, 1777, 
Yolajgania court arrestee! and (examined John (Jampbell, 

' Augusta UcronlH. i. 500, MH. 

* Tke Revolulinn on the ffppcr Ohio, li.'J. 



234 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Alexander McKee, and Simon Girty, the noted Indian 
leader. Girty was discharged; McKee, who had been 
put on parole as a suspected loyalist, was again paroled. 
Farther south, in Montgomery, William Preston, county- 
Ueu tenant, labored to secure the submission of Captain 
Thomas Burk, his militia company, and forty others, all of 
whom refused the Virginia oath of allegiance. Preston com- 
plained that the act of May, 1777, directed against the dis- 
affected, carrying penalties of disarmament and loss of civil 
rights, gave the frontiersmen no concern, since they did 
not talk treason and so failed to come within the act of 
1776 for " punishing certain offenses." 

Indeed, the southwest in the summer of 1777 was a 
greatly disturbed region. Tories from North Carolina and 
others, it is stated, from eastern Virginia traveled in bands 
through the mountain settlements, stealing horses and com- 
mitting robberies and occasionally murder.^ A few of these 
Tory outlaws were captured and tried; among them Isaac 
Sebo, Jeremiah Slaughter, and William Houston, who were 
convicted of being inimical and suffered confiscation of 
property and imprisonment. William Campbell, county- 
lieutenant of Washington, arrested a wayfarer who bore 
documents in his shoes tending to prove that he was a 
British emissary sent to stir up the Indians, whereupon the 
rough-and-ready colonel hanged him on a near-by tree 
without form of trial. ^ 

Campbell was very active in stamping out disaffection in 
the southwest, and largely because of his ruthless vigor and 
energy Toryism failed to develop in that section. The oath 

' L. P. Summers's Hi story of Southwest Virginia, 272. 
' Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vii, 120. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 235 

of allegiance prescribed by act of assembly was rigorously 
administered in the west as in other parts of the State, but 
it meant little, for lawlessness rather than any attachment 
to the royal cause was the origin of discontent and trouble 
there. The disturbed conditions inseparable from a state 
of war, together with the absence of many of the best men 
of that wild country in the army, gave horse-thieves and 
counterfeiters an excellent opportunity to ply their trades, 
and such outlaws were glad to form connections with 
brother outlaws of loyalist pretensions in North Carolina. 
Francis Hopkins, a counterfeiter serving a term in jail, es- 
caped and raised a band of brigands, which lived by horse- 
stealing and highway robbery. Campbell arrested Hopkins 
one day while he was riding a stolen horse and uncere- 
moniously hanged him on the roadside. After his death his 
brother, William Hopkins, continued making depredations 
in Washington County until arrested in 1779. He was sen- 
tenced to jail and confiscation of estate "for treasonable 
practices against the United States of America, in taking up 
arms under the British standard." ^ Regulators patroled 
Washington County, as well as other western counties, for 
several years and sternly repressed disorder. In neighbor- 
ing Montgomery County a condition of anarchy existed 
until militia from Washington suppressed the lawless 
element. 

In the summer of 1779 Tories from the Yadkin River in 
North Carolina and the New River in Montgomery formed 
a combination for the purpose, it seems, of attacking the 
State lead mines in that county. William Preston, the 
county -lieutenant, unable to cope with the situation, called 
• Summers, 277. 



236 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

upon William Campbell, who came to his assistance with a 
body of Washington militia. This small force overran the 
disaffected region, quartering itself on Tories, plundering 
them, and compelling some of them to enlist in the Ameri- 
can army or give security for good behavior.^ The adjacent 
region in North Carolina received like treatment. Camp- 
bell then went on to break up a nest of outlaws in Black 
Lick Valley in what is now Wythe County; according to 
accounts he arrested a dozen robbers who had been raiding 
the settlements and hanged them on two great white oaks 
known for a century afterwards as the "Tory Trees." 
Whether Campbell actually executed so large a number of 
men offhand is doubtful, but that strong means were em- 
ployed in 1779 to suppress the lawless and discontented 
element is evident from an act of immunity passed by the 
assembly in the fall for the benefit of William Campbell, 
Walter Crockett, and their associates. ^ 

Disaffection had spread widely through western Vir- 
ginia by 1779. In Augusta a number of prosecutions are 
recorded; a deposition dated in September, 1779, states 
that one Robert Craig was a violent Tory.^ The next year 
James Anderson, a school-teacher, was summoned to court 
for drinking confusion to Congress; and, more significant 
still, a writ was returned in April, 1780, marked: "Not 
executed for fear of the Tories." In Rockingham dis- 
affection was greater. Francis McBride was bound to 
appear before the November, 1779, grand jury to answer 
a charge of speaking " words disrespectful to the Govern- 
ment & present Constitution."'* Likewise Gerard Erwine 

' Summers, 292. * Ibid., 292. » Augusta Records, i, 377. 

* J. W. Wayland's History of Rockingham County, 75. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 237 

was bailed to appear in court because he had "propagated 
some news tending to raise Tumults and Sedition in the 
State"; and two others were convicted of conspiring with 
the enemy. The court, on June 9, 1780, examined John 
Davis on suspicion of treason and "other misdemeanors," 
sending him on to the general court for trial. '^ 

The situation became actually dangerous in western 
Virginia in 1780, with the predominance of the British in 
the South. The troubled New River was again the principal 
scene of disturbance, although a larger territory was more 
or less involved. William Preston appealed for help to 
Jefferson, then governor, who directed William Campbell 
to put himself at the head of the Washington and Bote- 
tourt militia and take in hand "those Paracides," as the 
heated governor styled them.^ A couple of months later, in 
September, 1780, Jefferson wrote the President of Congress 
that disaffection had spread over Washington, Montgom- 
ery, Henry, and Bedford, and that many hundreds had 
actually enlisted to serve the king of England. This state- 
ment was exaggerated, but solid reason existed for ill -case. 
On October 27, 1780, he wrote the Virginia delegates in 
Congress : — 

A very dangerous Insurrection in Pittsylvania was prevented a 
few days ago by being discovered three days before it was to take 
place. The Ringleaders were seized in their Beds. This dangerous 
fire is only smothered: When it will break out seems to depend 
altogether on events. It extends from Montgomery County along 
our Southern boundary to Pittsylvania and eastward as far as the 
James River. Indeed some suspicions have been raised of its hav- 
ing crept as far as Culpeper.^ 

1 Wayland, 81. 

2 Executive communications, 1780. ' Ford, n, 350. 



238 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

The Montgomery outbreak was serious because dis- 
affection there could count on the support of a district in 
North Carohna where loyaUsm became actually predomi- 
nant following the Tory uprising in Surry County in 1780. 
The lead mines in Montgomery, the point aimed at by the 
malcontents, were of great importance and a blow at them 
was a blow at the American cause; but the insurgents were 
suppressed before they had the chance to do more than 
threaten. They received rough treatment. Colonel Charles 
Lynch, superintendent of the lead mines, took the foremost 
part in terrorizing them, and is said to have given origin to 
that famous euphemism, "lynch law," by his proceedings 
on this occasion.^ It is possible that insurgents were exe- 
cuted without trial ; beyond doubt violent and illegal means 
were used, because the assembly, in October, 1782, passed 
another immunity act for William Preston, Charles Lynch, 
and all others engaged in suppressing the conspiracy.^ Even 
after this lesson, in April, 1781, Preston reported that the 
lead mines were in some danger from the disaffected.^ 

The whole southern border of Virginia was more or less 
in a state of disturbance in 1780. Volunteers were in the 
field from a number of counties, — and apparently in some 
strength judging from their expenses, — engaged in over- 
awing the conspirators along the Dan River and westwards. 
Companies of mounted infantry from Montgomery and 
Washington ranged through the borderland between Vir- 
ginia and North Carolina, making many arrests; seventy- 
five offenders were taken under guard to Bedford jail, where 
they remained about a month. Those arrested were prob- 

^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, iii, 190, ^ Hening, xi, 134. 

' Calendar of Virginia State Papers, ii, 36. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 239 

ably the most notorious and it is likely that the troops 
quartered themselves ujxin less active nuilcontents and 
wasted their substance, as had been done the year before. 
There was also a little bloodshed. INTajor Joseph (^loyd, of 
Montgomery, went over the North Carolina line with three 
companies of mounted volunteers, partly Virginians, partly 
Carolinians, and attacked a force of Carolina loyalists at 
Shallow Ford on the Yadkin River, on October 14, 1780. A 
brisk engagement resulted in the defeat of the Tories with 
a loss of twenty killed and wounded. This expedition, and 
the decisive defeat of the Carolina Tories at King's Moun- 
tain in September, relieved western Virginia from the 
danger of becoming the seat of a loyalist uprising in 1780. 
Developments in the west were but an acute phase of the 
dissatisfaction current in Virginia at the time. The ever- 
growing burdens of the war and the constant (;alls on 
militia for field service had largely sai)i)ed the real enthu- 
siasm which the generality had shown in 1770. Moreover, 
the patriot organization, once so strong, had now greatly 
relaxed. County committees had passed out of existence 
with the end of the political revolution and the establish- 
ment of a permanent government; ordinary governmental 
machinery replaced the nmch more acute and efficient 
Revolutionary tribunals. Expression of Tory opinion sel- 
dom met with punishment, and in the tidewater counties 
correspondence with the enemy seems to have been com- 
mon. The attitude of the people towards military service 
constantly became more unwilling; malingering abounded 
and comi)laints were frequent and loud.^ A petition from 
Caroline County, probably written by Edmund Pendleton, 
* Legislative Petitions. Churlotle (A3995). 



240 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

graphically describes the atrocities in that county of secret 
Tories, who should be more properly denominated mal- 
contents. These continually charged the government with 
corruption and perfidy, protested against taxes and militia 
draughts as tyrannical and unconstitutional, refused to give 
aid in times of danger and belittled the successes and mag- 
nified the misfortunes of the American arms.^ Such mur- 
murings typify the attitude of certain classes of every pop- 
ulation called on to undergo a severe and wearisome strain 
like the Revolutionary War, the classes that value present 
comfort and welfare more than political principle and are 
devoid of military enthusiasm at any time. Probably a 
considerable number of people in every county in the State 
were of this persuasion in 1780, for the brave and ardent 
spirits had gone off to join the army and were for the most 
part dead, and the indifferent or faint-hearted predomi- 
nated. Such men, of course, were not Tories, but they 
would bend with the storm and might constitute a distinct 
danger in a crisis. 

But disaffection in the east was not merely passive. The 
militia draughts, the most onerous imposition of the govern- 
ment, met with open resistance at Northumberland Court- 
House, near the Potomac, where on September 14 and 15, 
1780, a great riot took place and a number of people were 
killed and wounded. On the second day the local militia 
which remained faithful succeeded in putting down the 
rioters, who were tried by court-martial and sentenced in 
many instances to serve as soldiers for eighteen months 
or\ the war. The majority of mutineers who had not been 
captured surrendered on these terms, but a few boarded 
* Legislative Petitions. Caroline (A3740). 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 241 

English vessels in the Bay and escaped.^ The many in- 
stances of growing disloyalty to the American cause 
brought the government in 1780 to take further measures 
against offenders. The assembly amended the act "for the 
punishment of certain offenses" so as to make it a misde- 
meanor after August 1, 1780, to state by writing, printing, 
or speech that America ought to be dependent on Great 
Britain, to acknowledge allegiance to the king, or encourage 
submission to the British. Prosecution should be made in 
county courts and penalties were limited to fines of one 
hundred thousand pounds of tobacco and imprisonment 
for five years. The act was limited to the duration of the 
war.2 

This law made procedure far more certain and satis- 
factory than before, but it was supplemented by still more 
direct measures. An extraordinary act " for giving farther 
power to the governor and council" put the inhabitants of 
sections threatened by invasion under a modified martial 
law. The government received authority to commit sus- 
pects to jail or remove them to places of confinement. In 
case of invasion or insurrection, persons acting as guides 
or spies for the enemy, giving them aid or intelligence, or 
dissuading militia from service were to be tried by court- 
martials of militia oflScers. Sentences required confirma- 
tion by the governor. Most of the trials for disaffection 
in 1781 were conducted by court-martials, which, under 
this act, had cognizance of offenses hitherto unnoticed by 
the law. But in spite of such legislation, the government 
showed mildness towards the wrongdoers brought to its 
notice in 1780. The assembly at its October session par- 

^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, i, 534. * Hening, x, 268. 



242 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

doned the people of Henry, Bedford, Pittsylvania, Bote- 
tourt, Montgomery, and Washington who had taken the 
king's oath or encouraged enlistments in the British serv- 
ice, but had not committed any criminal acts, provided 
they swore allegiance to the Commonwealth before the last 
day of February, 1781. The benefits of this act were ex- 
tended to a handful of Tories in the public jail at Rich- 
mond. 

Such leniency may or may not have been misplaced. 
Certainly Jefferson's government was frequently defied 
and nothing like the vigorous anti-loyalist spirit that 
marked the beginning of the Revolution existed in 1781. 
When the British first seriously assailed Virginia in 1779 
and occupied Suffolk, destroying enormous quantities of 
stores and meeting with no resistance from the ill-prepared 
militia, they reported that numerous applications of sub- 
mission were made them by the inhabitants.^ The spirit 
of disaffection existing along Chesapeake Bay from the 
first began to show itself as the war turned against the 
Americans. British cruisers and privateers swarmed in 
the Bay, plundered the whole tidewater section, and in- 
flicted immense damage; a British fleet in a single raid in 
1779 carried off three hundred slaves along with much 
other property. Towards the close of the Revolution the 
State contained an increasing number of passive Tories, 
secret traitors who would take no overt step, but watched 
the trend of events intently. The Virginia delegates in 
Congress wrote home, on April 2, 1781, that a French war- 
ship had carried a number of Virginians to Newport, 
among them traitorous citizens who might injure the cause 
1 Virginia Historical Register, iv, 188. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 243 

by giving information to the enemy or sowing disaffection.* 
The number of malcontents, already considerable in 1779 
and 1780, increased in 1781, with the transfer of hostilities 
to Virginia soil. The inevitable sufferings of war, which had 
been great from the first, were now aggravated by the 
operations of countless commissaries and quartermasters. 
State and Continental, who plundered right and left, some- 
times giving worthless certificates in return for what they 
took and sometimes not. 

A good many Tories were in prison at the beginning of 
1781. Even in the pressure of Arnold's invasion, on Janu- 
ary 3, 1781, the council examined one of them, Robert B. 
Carre, who was remanded to jail for the period of the 
invasion because of disaffection. ^ On February 1, 1781, 
when the storm had abated, Jefferson wrote to Governor 
Lee, of Maryland, in regard to one Joseph Shoemaker, 
who had been guilty of violence in Virginia and was now 
under arrest in Baltimore, declaring that the government 
had no prison in Richmond and suggesting that Shoemaker 
be tried and executed in Maryland if he were guilty of any 
crimes in that State. But Lee declined to act as Jefferson's 
hangman and sent Shoemaker to Richmond, where he was 
imprisoned in Henrico jail along with other Tories. These 
latter, to the number of about twenty-five, complained that 
they had been confined in jail for six months without trial 
and asked to be examined in any convenient county court 
or be released on bail pending examination.^ Other com- 
plaints came to the government in 1781 from suspects 
imprisoned elsewhere. Reuben Mitchell, a ship-captain 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, ii, 4. * Council Journal (1781), 4. 
» Executive Papers (December, 1781). Virginia State Library. 



244 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

confined in Hanover, complained that he had been sixteen 
days in the provost guard without trial and that he was 
unable to secure a copy of the charges against him. John 
Cabeen, a Carolinian who had been arrested in Virginia 
and thrown into jail at Charlottesville, declared that he 
was kept chained among a gang of felons and had been 
given no hearing. 

Arnold's raid displayed in striking manner the military 
weakness of Virginia and the government's utter unpre- 
paredness; it was a feat as discouraging to the patriot 
population as it was encouraging to the ill-disposed. Dis- 
content with the government became general, while actual 
disaffection grew widespread. Ordinary suspects could, of 
course, be clapped into jail and left to cool their heels, but 
there were insidious forms of treason which it was difficult 
for the government to combat. The British, with an utter 
lack of scruple, sought to undermine the patriots by mean 
intrigue as persistently as they attempted open conquest; 
they used every weapon and advantage of war, honest and 
dishonest. 

Among their choice tactics was the perversion of flag-of- 
truce vessels to partisan purposes. The British had sought 
and obtained leave for flag-of -truce vessels to restore kid- 
napped slaves and other plunder to their owners in return 
for supplies. This was, of course, an accommodation both 
to the plunderers and the plundered, but chiefly to the 
former, who needed the supplies. After a time the system 
was so stretched as to make distinctions between the prop- 
erty of persons who had been active in the patriot cause 
and of those who had remained passive, the latter being 
restored and the former kept. Finally a flag-of -truce went 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 245 

so far as to open trade with Mrs. Byrd, of Westover, 
widow of the distinguished William Byrd, a loyalist, under 
the pretense of making restitution for captured property. 
The facts became known, and the council, on February 22, 
1781, informed Baron Steuben, who had allowed the Brit- 
ish ship to go up the James, of its disapproval of Mrs. 
Byrd's conduct in receiving goods from the enemy in cir- 
cumstances amounting to actual barter.^ Jefferson wrote 
Mrs. Byrd a few days later that her offense came within 
the act defining treason and that the attorney-general 
would proceed against her. The vessel, he said, had been 
allowed to ascend the river solely to return slaves carried 
off, instead of which it had begun a regular commerce.^ 
The council directed a warrant to issue to the judges of the 
general court for the trial of Mrs. Byrd in Richmond on 
March 15, 1781. But the trial never took place, owing 
possibly to Mrs. Byrd's sex and rank, possibly to the gravity 
of the situation in Virginia, which precluded the paying of 
attention to such comparative trivialities. So this woman 
escaped the fate of one of Washington's old loves, Mary 
Philipse, who was attainted of treason. The council, how- 
ever, forbade flags-of -truce to be used in negotiating the 
return of plundered property.^ 

Eastern Virginia was more and more threatened as the 
year advanced; the defenselessness of the State encouraged 
Arnold to take position at Portsmouth, while at the same 
time Comwallis gradually drew near from the South. But 
in the southwest, the region where discontent was most 
acute and dangerous, the situation was improved by the 

1 CouncU Journal (1781), 61. « Governor's Letter-Book (1781), 152. 
» Council Journal (1781), 68. 



246 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

chastisement of the Cherokee Indians, who had begun 
to make themselves troublesome in December, 1780. The 
Cherokees were by far the most formidable and dangerous 
tribe the Southern colonies had to reckon with. Partly 
civilized and threatened by the growing frontier of Virginia 
and the Carolinas, the Cherokees listened readily to the 
British agents and Tories who worked steadily to raise 
them against the borders. When at last they moved, Vir- 
ginia and North Carolina militia combined to make a force 
of respectable size, invaded the Cherokee country, and 
burned a number of their towns. ^ The Indians prudently 
allowed the militia to return home unopposed. But though 
the Cherokee expedition had a good effect on the far fron- 
tier, discontent was too prevalent in the west in the spring 
of 1781 not to show itself. 

Garrett Vanmeter, county-lieutenant of Hampshire, 
wrote to Jefferson, on April 11, 1781, informing him that 
the agent sent to impress clothes and beef and draught men 
had been forced by a mob to abandon his work and that 
peaceful methods had failed to bring the mutineers to 
obedience. At the same time William Preston reported 
that he did not think the Montgomery quota of militia 
demanded for general service could be raised, because 
nearly half of the militia were disaffected and any attempt 
to press them into service would either drive them to the 
mountains or bring on a riot. The Hampshire mutineers, 
finding a leader, had begun a rather serious disturbance. 

A certain John Claypole said If all the men were of his mind, 
they would not make up any Cloathes, Beef or Men, and all that 
would join him should turn out. Upon which he got all the men 

^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, i, 435. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 247 

present to five or six and Got Liquor and Drank King George the 
third's health, and Damnation to Congress, upon which com- 
plaint was made to three Magistrates. Upon which there was a 
warrant Issued for several of them, and Guard of fifty men with 
the Sheriff. When they came to the place they found sixty or 
seventy men embodied, with arms — after some time they 
capitulated. The Sheriff served the precept on the said John 
Claypole, but he refused to come with him or give up his arms; 
but agreed to come such a time, which time is Past — I was 
informed there are several Deserters amongst these people. 
Some of them from the English Prisoners.^ 

Jefferson replied that the spirit of mutiny must be 
crushed, yet counseled Vanmeter that it would perhaps be 
better not to move against the body of insurgents and 
drive them into open rebellion, but, on their dispersal, 
"take them out of their Beds singly and without Noise." ^ 
This advice illustrates Jefferson's preference for finesse 
over direct methods. The insurgents, however, instead of 
dispersing as the governor expected, increased in numbers 
until they were reported to be a thousand strong. Van- 
meter finally sent four companies of militia to break up 
the gathering, which was easily accomplished and without 
other casualties than one man accidentally killed. The 
only fighting of the outbreak took place when insurgents 
holding a mill fired on a party of horse without effect. 
Arrests followed the dispersion of the mutineers and the 
county court immediately examined forty-two prisoners, 
remanding some of them for trial. The assembly, which 
was anxious to end the sedition as quickly as possible, au- 
thorized the executive to offer a pardon, and the governor 
accordingly proclaimed it for the benefit of those insurgents 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, ii, 40. " Letter-Book (1781). 



248 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

outlying in the n\ountnin.s. The council nppointed a special 
court to try the otTenders who had been arrested. It met 
at Hampshire Court-House for the trial, in July, 1781, but 
as the judges appointed in the order failed to appear, noth- 
ing was done. Nevertheless, the tlireat was an excellent 
corrective for a turbulent conununity inclined to regard 
its own wishes as law. A number of excited women crowded 
the court-house, anxious to see the prisoners and fearing 
that they would be sentenced to death and iuimediately 
executed.^ The government was at last showing that there 
was a limit to its complaisance, something it should have 
done long before. 

No action was taken, but the ringleaders remained in 
jail. Later on Chni^olc and several of his associates ap- 
pealed for an extension to then\selves of the act of pardon, 
as in the case of the southwestern mutineers. IVter Hogg, 
the Rockingham county-lieutenant, gave the petition his 
support. The governor replied that he did not have the 
constitutional power to pardon oHfenders still in the pos- 
session of a court; only the assembly could dismiss prosecu- 
tions. At the same time JetTerson admitted that these men 
sufTered hardship in being held for trial while their equally 
guilty comrades had been pardoned." Finally the council 
decided to issue pardons to all the insurgents except John 
Cla>iH>le and four other rii\i:;leaders.^ One by one the last 
of the Hampshire insurgents were taken or surrendered; 
they claiuHxl to have been n\isled through ignorance to op- 
pose the taxes and the draught, which was an outworn but 
cfTective plea. Eventually even the leaders wore pardoned. 

» Citlrndar of J'irginia Shift' Pa}vrs. u. iS5. 

« Lctler-Book (HSl), 49. » Council Journal {\1S1-Si). i\. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 249 

The Hampshire outbreak was merely symptomatic of 
the discom"agement prevalent in western Virginia and of the 
resentment caused by war taxes and draughting; what the 
people endured without murmuring in the Civil War seemed 
an intolerable burden in the Revolution. The draughts 
were especially resented and met with frequent resistance. 
In Augusta and Rockingham the people gathered for the 
drawings seized the lists and destroyed them. "I don't 
know where this may stop," wrote Major Thomas Posey, 
"if there is not a timeous check, in Hanging a few, for 
examples to the rest." ^ But the government would shed 
no blood and offered a pardon to the rioters who would 
return to their duty. The latter thereupon surrendered 
the ringleaders, William Ward and Lewis Baker. In June, 
1781, Augusta court found Ward and Baker guilty of levy- 
ing war against the Commonwealth and held them for 
trial by a special committee the council appointed. In 
Bedford also a number of men combined to defeat the 
draught. James Calloway, the county-lieutenant, over- 
awed them and imprisoned their leaders in Bedford jail. 
A court-martial sentenced several of them to serve six 
months in the army, but they all managed to escape.^ 
Reports from the southwest in June, 1781, stated that 
parties of Tories and deserters lurked in Montgomery and 
Washington Counties,^ and in July, William Preston de- 
clared that more than half of the Montgomery people were 
disaffected and that their numbers were growing. Wliigs 
could not be induced to enter militia service for fear of the 
Tories and Indians. 

^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, ii, 107. 

2 Co7mcU Journal (1781), 115. 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, n, 184. 



250 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

In the east the situation in 1781 was almost as bad. The 
eastern people suffered as much as the west from taxes and 
draughts, and, in addition, were exposed to the depreda- 
tions of the enemy and of quartermasters and other official 
and unofficial extorters. Indeed, the east offered a better 
opportunity for resisting the government than the west, for 
the presence of British troops in the former section during 
the greater part of the year gave encouragement to every 
kind of treasonable and seditious practice. There was much 
malingering, much shirking of duty, much secret inter- 
course with the enemy and some rioting and plundering, 
but no party or semblance of a party arose, as in North and 
South Carolina, to advocate the royal cause. The soli- 
darity of the planter class on the American side remained 
practically unaffected, even though the evils of war were 
bringing out the weakness or lack of patriotism of many 
individuals of that type which all the world over is apt to 
bow the head to whatever cause happens to have the upper 
hand for the time being. But such men do not found parties. 
The records of the year are full of accusations of treason 
and Toryism; overt acts were not wanting and a handful 
of men actually made war on their State. Trials followed 
and many convictions of treason, but in the end mercy in- 
variably triumphed, sometimes at the expense of justice. 
The government used great moderation in these critical 
months in dealing with those guilty of treason and dis- 
affection. 

There was some excuse for harshness, too. The British 
commanders, following the inexcusable custom they had 
introduced in the South, paroled unarmed citizens and 
threatened them with death if taken in arms against Eng- 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 251 

land at any subsequent time. Matthews seems to have 
been the first British commander to employ the system in 
Virginia; he paroled a number of Nansemond non-com- 
batants in 1779, and Arnold and Cornwallis greatly ex- 
tended it. As this practice, if systematically carried out 
and generally regarded, would have left it in the power of 
a mere raiding party of cavalry permanently to neutralize 
half a State, Jefferson could not, of course, put up with it. 
He accordingly required persons who had accepted paroles 
and intended to observe them to go within the British 
lines, where they belonged. Such action on his part was 
imperative; the government could not allow whole sections 
of the population to become paralyzed by a perversion of 
military usage. ^ 

The governor's decision put the inhabitants in the line 
of march of the British army in a most distressing quan- 
dary. Peacefulness was no protection whatever; unarmed 
planters and small farmers engaged in looking after their 
affairs and offering no pretense of resistance were forced 
to give their paroles not to serve in the American army at 
any time in the future, or were liable to be shipped off to 
New York to endure the horrors of the British prisons, al- 
most unparalleled in history. On the other hand, if they 
gave parole and later were called into the field with the 
militia, they might be executed in case of capture. Jeffer- 
son retorted to this threat by threatening to execute an 
equal number of British prisoners in his hands, and it 
does not appear that Cornwallis murdered any citizens of 
Virginia under pretext of breaking parole as he murdered 
unfortunate Carolinians. Jefferson further attempted to 
» Council Journal (1781), 11. 



252 " THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

make paroling difficult by isolating British posts as much 
as possible. In May, 1781, he asked the assembly to pro- 
hibit citizens from going within a certain distance of en- 
campments of the enemy, and to provide a method for the 
speedy trial of persons caught furnishing the enemy with 
supplies or acting as guides. This was necessary, he de- 
clared, because the military authorities had no power over 
civilians and could not prevent people from staying in their 
homes and submitting to the enemy's demands in order to 
save their property.^ The assembly thereupon extended 
the jurisdiction of court-martials over civilians guilty of 
intercourse with the enemy. 

The government had an even more serious embarrass- 
ment in the rapidily growing spirit of lawlessness in tide- 
water Virginia. Jefferson wrote to Colonel Innes in May, 
1781, that people in James City and York had committed 
acts amounting to treason and misprision of treason, al- 
though they had covered their tracks so well as to leave 
no legal proofs. He directed Innes to carry suspects before 
justices of the peace for ordinary legal investigation and 
ship them off to Richmond if so ordered by the court, but 
if evidence was lacking and there seemed danger of rescue 
simply to seize them without investigation and send them 
to Henrico jail. A dangerous outbreak against authority 
occurred on the Eastern Shore in April, 1781. This section, 
isolated and largely at the mercy of sea power, had al- 
ways contained many British sympathizers and lukewarm 
patriots. Besides the necessary burdens of the war, like 
taxes and militia drawings, the people had suffered from 
unceasing ravages of privateers and plunderers, who were, 
1 Letter-Book (1781), 31. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 253 

for all practical purposes, simply pirates. In addition the 
government allowed several successive tax levies to pile 
up on Accomac and Northampton taxpayers without 
warning, and a militia draught proved the last straw. On 
April 20, 1781, a mob of several thousand men, armed 
with clubs and poles, met at Accomac Court-House for the 
purpose of opposing the draught. George Corbin, the act- 
ing county-lieutenant, attempted to quiet the rioters, but, 
finding his efforts useless, postponed the drawing to a later 
date. On this occasion the crowd again assembled in force 
and refused to listen to Corbin's pleading for obedience to 
the law. Once more the draught was not held.^ 

Thereupon confusion reigned on the Eastern Shore. 
Leading citizens advised their neighbors not to pay taxes; 
tax collectors refused to make collections or hand over 
money already received to the commissioners; others were 
threatened for attempting to collect. Corbin feared to use 
force to restore order, but the ringleaders in the riot were 
tried by court-martial and sentenced to serve as soldiers 
for the duration of the war. The court-martial referred 
John Curtis and William Garrison, the only men of posi- 
tion among the malcontents, to the council for trial. Corbin 
vividly described the situation on the Eastern Shore : — 

With the enemy's barges continually hovering around over 
Sea and Bay coasts, threatening to burn and plunder all who 
should oppose their wicked designs. The disaffected daily in- 
creasing by their clandestine trade with the British at Portsmouth, 
their threats thrown out against all who shall fail to apply for 
protection and accept the proposed mercy, in the British proc- 
lamations, which have been industriously and artfuUy circu- 
lated and enforced.^ 

1 Calendar of Virginia State Papers, n, 99. ^ /jj-j_^ ^^ 135_ 



254 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

An even more serious occurrence followed this disturb- 
ance. The disaffected, who were constantly becoming 
bolder because unmolested by the distracted government, 
had taken to robbing remote plantations and attempting 
to gain the assistance of the slaves. A planter accidentally 
surprised one of the conspirators while engaged in winning 
over some negroes and was shot dead. This outrage was 
too much for the patience of the people; they rose in arms, 
forced a confession from a slave, and hanged three of the 
plunderers.^ The lynching was revenged by a descent on 
Pungoteague of British barges, commanded by one Robin- 
son and manned chiefly by negroes. A handful of local 
militia turned out and drove off the raiders after a brief 
skirmish. The latter took to their boats, followed by the 
militia, who continued the pursuit up Chesapeake Bay for 
four days and nights, but without overtaking them. The 
patriots retiu-ned in no complaisant humor and a court- 
martial proceeded to try John Lyon, rector of St. George's 
Parish, Accomac, for aiding the enemy and discouraging 
the militia from taking arms against Robinson's raiders. 
The case against Lyon looked bad, since he had gone on 
board Robinson's barge at night, though apparently un- 
willingly. He received a fair trial, and the sentence of five 
years' imprisonment imposed was strictly within the law; 
there could be no doubt of Lyon's open Toryism. Yet the 
minister bore a good character and was popular with his 
parishioners, some of whom petitioned the governor for 
a remission of his sentence to exile. John Cropper, the 
county-lieutenant, however, reported that Lyon deserved 
a halter. 2 Cropper sent the worst offenders in the Accomac 

^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, u, 340, 412. 
2 Council Journal (1781). 250. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 255 

outbreak, Lyon, John Curtis, William Garrison, and five 
others, as prisoners to Richmond, with a recommendation 
of leniency. The government was mild and changed Lyon's 
imprisonment to residence in the country twenty miles 
from Richmond, eventually allowing him to return to 
Accomac. 

The whole tidewater section was becoming distracted, 
a prey to raiders all along the shores of rivers and bays, 
honeycombed with intrigue and full of secret traitors, who 
were too few in number in any one place or too fearful of 
public sentiment to act openly. The New York privateers 
in Chesapeake waters paid no attention to the political 
views of their victims, robbing good loyalists as wilUngly 
as rebels. Ralph Wormeley and Philip Grymes were 
among the former class. Wormeley's splendid estate at 
Rosegill was plundered by privateersmen, who found 
guides and assistants in the plantation negroes. Wormeley 
and other sufferers from this raid appealed to Leslie, com- 
manding the British force at Portsmouth, to control his 
privateers, and Leslie returned some slaves and other 
stolen property.^ The privateersmen on the British side 
were difficult to restrain, for they were pirates in every- 
thing but name; they used New York as a refuge and the 
Union Jack as a cover for indiscriminate robbery and out- 
rage. They were for the most part Americans, chiefly from 
New York, but also from Maryland and Virginia — fisher- 
men, coast sailors, marine vagrants, who seized the un- 
rivaled opportunity for crime offered by Chesapeake Bay 
and its numberless inlets. In the early years of the war the 
Virginia navy had kept these water-thieves in check, but 
* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, n, 405. 



256 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

the navy came to an end in the invasion at the beginning 
of 1781, and the pirates enjoyed full scope. Conditions in 
tidewater Virginia had become distressing by the summer 
of that year and continued so throughout 1782. 

Constant arrests and trials in 1781 showed the extent 
of disaffection and the deep public discouragement. Local 
militia commanders, invested with the powers of martial 
law, strove to suppress the discontented whom the ubi- 
quitous and energetic county committees had once so 
effectually terrorized. Cases of disaffection were numer- 
ous. Archibald Ritchie, of Tappahannock, the loyalist, 
happening to send a letter by the same messenger used by 
a privateer captain in Tappahannock jail, had his papers 
seized and sealed.^ Fauntleroy Dye, an ex-tobacco-inspec- 
tor of Richmond County, had fallen into the hands of 
the enemy in 1779 and returned home somewhat later with 
a considerable sum of money, which naturally excited sus- 
picion in the community. Dye, who had become thoroughly 
tainted during his captivity, began to use his influence to 
persuade his neighbors to resist militia calls and to hold 
private meetings of a doubtful character at his house. 
Learning this, Major Joel, with a party of mounted volun- 
teers, went into Richmond, arrested one Ti£Be, "a most 
notorious promoter of sedition," and surrounded Dye's 
house, where he took a few armed Tories, who had " in 
open contempt of the laws of their country, bid defiance 
to the county lieutenant, and held constant meetings of 
the disaffected." ^ A court-martial at Leedstown found Dye 
guilty of giving intelligence to the enemy and encouraging 

1 Council Journal (1781), 359. 

2 Calendar of Virginia State Papers, ii, 155. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 257 

desertion, and sentenced him to prison for the period of the 
war. 

Caution was necessary to escape suspicion in the sum- 
mer of 1781, so general were the reports of disaffection. 
Because of communications carried on with the British 
at Portsmouth for the return of property taken by priva- 
teersmen, which led to suspicions of a widespread system 
of intelligence among loyalists, the government ordered the 
local authorities to arrest a number of persons along the 
Rappahannock and seize their papers: Ralph Wormeley, 
Jr., Philip Grymes, and about twenty others, some of them 
prominent merchants. These arrests had little effect in 
stemming the tide of discontent ever strengthening through 
the year. Amos Weeks reported from Princess Anne that 
there were many disaffected in the county, whom he 
wished to bring to justice. Thomas Newton confirmed his 
account: — 

The County of Princess Anne has neither civil or military law 
in it — they are striving to collect their militia — to-morrow 
will determine their numbers to turn out — murder is committed 
and no notice taken of it for want of some support up the Coun- 
try — a few desperate fellows go about in the sea Coasts and 
large Swamps and do mischief in the nights. Every one who 
appears active against them is the object of their fury.^ 

Other counties in the neighborhood were as bad. With 
the British established at Portsmouth and sending out 
detachments into the surrounding country to build posts, 
the natural Toryism of southeastern Virginia reappeared. 
Josiah Parker, the militia commander in Isle of Wight, re- 
ported that some there visited the enemy and that many 
^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, u, 451. 



258 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Norfolk, Princess Anne, and Nansemond people had been 
paroled by the British on their own request, although only- 
twelve men in Nansemond had actually taken arms with 
them. Feeling ran so high between Tories and patriots in 
this region that violence followed; how much it is ha^rd to 
say; the records speak vaguely of murder as being com- 
mon, but specific instances are not so easy to find. One 
revolting crime is recorded. A militia captain named Nott, 
in scouting through Nansemond, fell into an ambush set 
by some local Tories and was mortally wounded. The am- 
bushers put him in a cart and were on their way to the 
nearest British post when a squad of American dragoons 
fell upon them, retook the dying man, and captured the 
leader of the party, Dempsey Butler, a deserter from the 
militia and all-round bad character.^ Farther up the coast, 
in Gloucester, Sir John Peyton expressed a belief that the 
enemy were in communication with Gwynn's Island and 
Middlesex and that the people were generally inclined 
towards Toryism. Constant accusations of treason came 
to the council and many prisoners, some innocent, some 
unquestionably guilty. Benjamin Bronson and Warwood 
Burt, of York, were bailed to appear before the council on 
the charge of treason, and John Warden, against whom in- 
formation had been lodged, gave bond of twenty thousand 
pounds of tobacco to appear.^ On October 12, 1781, during 
the siege of Yorktown, the council dismissed a number of 
suspects on their expressing contrition and giving security 
to furnish each a soldier for the war. 

What was in some respects the most remarkable trial 

* Calendar of Virginia Stafe Papers, ii, 189. 
2 Council Journal (1781), 212. 



SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION 259 

case of Toryism during the Revolution was that of "Billy," 
a mulatto slave tried and condemned to death by Prince 
William court in May, 1781, "for aiding and abetting 
and feloniously and traitorously waging and levying war 
against the Commonwealth, in conjunction with divers of 
the same, in an armed vessel." ^ Two of the judges dis- 
sented on the ground that a slave, not being a citizen of the 
State, owed it no allegiance and so could not commit trea- 
son. This was a new doctrine, fruit of Revolutionary 
humanitarianism. Slaves had been tried and executed for 
treason in the colonial period; a notable case had occurred 
in 1710, and a slave was executed for robbery and treason 
in Norfolk in 1778. Mann Page, the executor of the estate 
owning "Billy," appealed to Jefferson for a reprieve, which 
was granted, and later petitioned the legislature for his 
pardon, on the ground that his conviction of treason was 
illegal. 2 The committee appointed to consider the appeal 
concurred, and it is probable that the slave was pardoned, 
though the end of the case is obscure. 

So far-reaching had been disaffection in Virginia that the 
public jail at the end of November, 1781, was filled to its 
utmost capacity with persons awaiting trial for political 
offenses. William Rose, the keeper, reported that seven men 
had been committed to jail on the governor's order, but 
that it would be impossible to keep them in so confined a 
space, along with the number already in prison, without 
endangering their lives, whereupon they were released on 
bail. On December 4, 1781, thirty-two loyalists captured 
at Yorktown and elsewhere were in the Richmond jail, 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, n, 90. 

* Journal, House of Delegates (May, 1781), 11. 



260 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

besides other prisoners. This overcrowding in a small con- 
fine led the council to take measures for a jail delivery. 
The governor reported that the prisoners were so closely 
quartered that their lives were actually in danger and the 
council discharged them. 

It could afford to be magnanimous. The war was over 
in effect; the peril past. But that dangerous discontent 
and open treason were progressing in 1781 to the point of 
threatening the activities of the government in waging the 
war cannot be doubted. There was no semblance of a Tory 
party, but everywhere were doubt, dissatisfaction, and a 
disinclination to make sacrifices. The victory of Yorktown 
rescued Virginia from a serious situation. 



CHAPTER X 

MILITARY OPERATIONS 

The later military movements in Virginia have been so 
frequently described and in such detail that a further pro- 
longed study would be superfluous; yet a general account of 
the operations of the war cannot well be excluded from any 
broad narrative of the Revolution. After Dunmore's ex- 
pulsion the offensive operations of the Virginia govern- 
ment ended. Its military activities were confined to fur- 
nishing supplies and troops for the Continental army, and 
it made little effort to provide for home defense. Militia 
organization actually became less ejQficient as the war pro- 
gressed. There was need, too, for a mobile and trained 
militia. Virginia was not invaded for several years, but the 
Chesapeake was terribly raided by privateers through the 
entire contest and the Indians were always threatening and 
occasionally dangerous. 

The Indian menace seemed great for a moment in 1776, 
when both the Creeks and Cherokees were carrying on 
hostilities against the borders of the Southern colonies. 
The arrival of a British force at this moment would have 
made the red men's assistance valuable; the British did 
not come and the Americans were able to put down the 
Indians. South Carolina roughly suppressed the Creeks, 
and the three Southern colonies then turned in concert 
against the Cherokees who were raiding Virginia as far 
as |he Blue Ridge. Virginia sent out an expedition under 
Colonel Isaac Christian which traversed the wilderness far 



•262 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

into the present State of Tennessee and endured extraor- 
dinary hardships. It met with no resistance, however, 
as the Cherokees were awed by the size of the force, and, 
after witnessing the destruction of some of their towns, 
sued for peace. Christian's raid made such an impression 
on these savages that they remained comparatively quiet 
for the rest of the war. 

The Enghsh, absorbed in their efforts to conquer the 
North, had allowed their allies to be subdued without 
assistance. And so long as the towns of Philadelphia and 
New York and the line of the Hudson remained the British 
objective, little heed was paid to the South. It was only 
after Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga and Howe had 
evacuated Philadelphia that the new commander-in-chief. 
Sir Henry Clinton, began to meditate an attack on the 
prosperous and undefended South. Sooner or later a 
Southern war would lead to an invasion of Virginia, the 
chief Southern State and the natural base of supplies for 
armies operating in the Carolinas. The British harassed the 
Commonwealth with several severe raids before making it 
the scene of regular campaigns. Command of the sea gave 
them the option of selecting any point along the coast for 
attack, and no country could be more inviting to water 
expeditions than Virginia, with its deeply indented shore 
and its numerous broad rivers. In the realization of these 
facts, Clinton sent an expedition from New York in May, 
1779, under Admiral Sir George Collier.^ The fleet an- 
chored in Hampton Roads on May 9, and Collier, with 
Matthews, who commanded the troops on board, lost 
little time in attacking Portsmouth, where the patriots 
* Campbell's History of Virginia, 696. 



MILITARY OPERATIONS 263 

had built a stout log-work on the Elizabeth River dignified 
by the name of Fort Nelson. With usual colonial fatuous- 
ness in military matters, they had left it open in the rear, 
so that the British by landing troops behind it exposed the 
Americans to attack. The garrison precipitately retreated 
and the enemy occupied Portsmouth without fighting. 
From this point as a center they sent out raiding parties 
in various directions, one of which captured Suffolk, the 
chief de'pot of military supplies in Virginia. Apparently 
the State government selected this exposed town in the 
belief that Virginia enjoyed immunity from British at- 
tempts. A militia force of two thousand had gathered at 
Suffolk, but it dispersed on the approach of the redcoats. 
Naval stores in large quantity and thousands of barrels 
of pork were destroyed, and then the expedition returned 
to New York. 

The rulers at Williamsburg had made a hasty attempt 
to meet the raid by calling out militia and holding two 
thousand recruits about to be sent to the Continental 
army. When Collier abandoned Portsmouth, they were 
suflBciently reassured to forward the recruits to South 
Carolina along with two troops of horse. The assembly 
passed a totally ineffective act for raising forty-five hun- 
dred volunteers by way of salving its conscience and gave 
the question little further thought. It did go so far, how- 
ever, as to ask for a detachment of the French fleet to 
guard the unprotected Chesapeake waters. If this request 
had been granted, the State would have escaped losses 
from privateers and organized raids like Collier's which 
finally came to endanger the American cause. But the 
French fleet was kept at Newport, where it accomplished 



264 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

notliing, while Virginia was left oi)en to assaults by forces 
of any si/e. 

In October, 1780, a British expedition of three thousand 
men conunanded by General Leslie landed at Portsmouth. 
Leslie was not primarily engaged in raiding, but in estab- 
lishing communication with Cornwallis in the Carolinas, 
and his ravages were not widespread. After a stay of about 
a month at Portsmouth and Sulfolk, he sailed for South 
Carolina to reinforce CA)ru\vallis. Militia in considerable 
numbers had gathered to oppose him, but according to the 
customary hand-to-mouth method of the Virginia govern- 
ment it disi)ersed on the disappearance of the immediate 
clanger. Collier's and Leslie's unopposed occupation of 
Virginia ports [)rei)ared the way for a much more serious 
enterj)rise; the State's evident helplessness encouraged the 
British to push raids into the interior. Clinlon chose Bene- 
dict Arnold to connnand the next expedition, which en- 
tered the Virginia Capes on December 30, 1780. 

Instead of stoi)[)ing at Portsmouth as the British com- 
manders had done j)reviously, Arnold boldly stood up the 
James with his force of sixteen hundred men. There was 
no army to op|)ose him; the j);itri()ts had thrown u]) earth- 
works at points along the river, an<l the camion at one of 
these, Hood's, fired on the flotilla, but t his feeble resistance 
ended when Arnold landed troops. The traitor reached 
Richmond on January 5, 1781. When he had destroyed 
the military stores and the public buildings at the new 
Virginia cai)ital, he fell ba(;k down the James. One detach- 
ment of the exi)e(litioii, in attempting to ascend the Ap- 
pomattox to I'etersburg, was so vigorously oj)posed by 
General Smallwood with a body of militia that it gave up 



MILITARY OPERATIONS 2G5 

the enterprise. Simcoe's cavalry suri)risc(l and dispersed a 
handful of militia at ('harlcs (Jity Court-IIouse. Arnold 
was anihushed at Hood's on his way down the river by 
George Rogers Clark, the Western hero, and suffered a 
slight loss. All in all, however, this small British expedi- 
tion met with no opposition worthy of the name. 

Arnold established himself at Portsmouth on January 
20, 1781. He had come for no flying visit, but for system- 
atic raiding; a reinforcement of two thousand men made 
him formidable. IJy this time the Virginia government 
had managed to bring four thousand militia into the field, 
part of the force on the Rappahannock under Weedon, 
part under Thomas Nelson, Jr., at Williamsburg, and part 
under Baron Steuben at Cabin Point on the James. ^ There 
was some pros])ect of assistance, too, since the presence 
of Arnold had called the attention of Washington and the 
French to the Virginia campaign. Desire to capture the 
traitor, as well as the necessity of preventing the destruction 
of the State's resources, led to a resolution to send a French 
fleet to the Chesapeake as a part of a joint military and 
naval movement. Lafayette was ordered to the head of 
the Bay with a detachment of the Continental army to 
be emi)loyed in the attemi)t. The plan of cooperation 
failed, owing largely to the blundering of the French. A 
squadron commanded by De Tilly entered Hampton 
Roads, but because of its small size the commander feared 
that he would be bottled up by the British fleet. Without 
attt!mi)ting any maneuvers, he sailed back to the French 
base of operations, Newport, Rhode Island. ^ 

' F. R. Lasaiter's Arnold'n Invasion of Virginia, 16. 
2 ('liarlcmagne Tower's The Marquis de La Fayette in the American 
Revolution, u, 224-25. 



266 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

All the same, the opportunity to capture Arnold was 
too tempting to be lost. The French admiral Destouches 
brought a second and larger fleet to Virginia with eleven 
hundred troops on board, commanded by Baron Viome- 
nil, Rochambeau's second in command. Destouches's 
tardy movements frustrated the plan. The British admiral 
Arbuthnot reached the Capes ahead of the French and an 
action between the two fleets resulted in the latter's return 
to Newport for a second time. 

This failure was attended with serious consequences. 
The militia had assembled in sufiicient numbers to be of 
some service in a joint attack on Portsmouth with the 
French and Lafayette's Continentals. Colonel Parker was 
at Suffolk with the Nansemond militia and Lawson at 
Smithfield with nine hundred infantry and a troop of 
horse. Muhlenberg occupied Cabin Point with eight hun- 
dred infantry and Armand's cavalry legion. On the north 
side of the James, Nelson had gathered one thousand men. 
Muhlenberg, who commanded all these forces, aimed to 
prevent Arnold from escaping south to join Cornwallis 
by acting in concert with the North Carolina militia, and 
he might have succeeded if the French had held command 
of the sea. As it was, the English were reinforced after 
Destouches's debacle, and the American plan of campaign 
completely broke down. Instead of taking the offensive 
against the English, the patriots were not even able to 
offer a successful defense to a new invasion projected from 
Portsmouth. The British fleet had brought further troops 
and another commander, Major-General Phillips. Phillips 
was a rare specimen of that insolent, overbearing military 
type which had done so much to prejudice the colonies 



MILITARY OPERATIONS 267 

against English rule. He was an oflScer of small ability, 
but as Virginia unassisted could make but little opposi- 
tion, he accomplished his object, which was to plunder the 
country. 

In the middle of April, 1781, Phillips went up the James 
River with the best part of his command. The James, 
which divides Virginia into unequal halves, was the main 
commercial highway and strategic line of the State. The 
chief towns were on it or near it, and the largest tobacco 
warehouses; to hold it was to control the greater part of 
eastern Virginia. Naturally, then, it was the center of 
operations for the campaign of 1781, both for Phillips's 
raid and the more serious movements of Cornwallis later 
in the year. Phillips turned aside to occupy Williamsburg 
and then proceeded up the Appomattox. Muhlenberg, with 
his militia, made some opposition to the British, who en- 
tered Petersburg on April 25, 1781, only after a lively 
brush. ^ The invaders created havoc, burning warehouses 
at Petersburg and Warwick and the military supply depot 
at Chesterfield Court-House. 

The main British objective was Richmond, where a 
quantity of stores again had been collected. Baron Steuben 
was now commanding in Virginia instead of Muhlenberg; 
he had only a handful of regulars and a small force of mili- 
tia, but he made such resistance as was possible and suc- 
ceeded in delaying the enemy's advance. Time was of im- 
portance, for Lafayette was rapidly drawing near with his 
Continentals. Though he had been ordered to Virginia 
originally for the attack on Portsmouth, which proved 
abortive, he arrived in season to be of great service in the 
1 Tower, ii, 292. 



268 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

defensive campaign now really beginning. The British 
reached Manchester on the south bank of the James op- 
posite Richmond on April 29, just as Lafayette entered the 
latter place from the north. ^ Phillips had the larger and 
better force, amounting to twenty-three hundred men, but 
the crossing of the river under fire was a somewhat hazard- 
ous operation and the English general allowed discretion 
to cool his ardor. He retired down the James to Westover 
after a raid of exceptional severity, in which Virginia suf- 
fered material injury. Lafayette followed along the north 
bank of the river, too weak to attack, but strong enough 
to oppose any attempt to cross. His presence was of im- 
portance, for it made impossible any wide dispersal of the 
British force for plundering. 

Phillips, who was ailing, returned to Petersburg and 
died on May 13; Arnold succeeded him in command. The 
generalissimo in the South, Lord Cornwallis, was advancing 
from North Carolina to join Arnold and inaugurate a cam- 
paign in Virginia. Lafayette, though he longed to prevent 
the junction, could do nothing with his few troops. He 
wrote to hasten the movements of Anthony Wayne, de- 
tached with a further force of Continentals to aid him, 
and passed over the James towards Petersburg. The rival 
artillery carried on a cannonade across the Appomattox, 
but the Frenchman was in such a dangerous position with 
the broad James in his rear that he speedily returned to 
Richmond. He still hoped to be able to attack Arnold 
before the arrival of Cornwallis; he did not know that the 
latter had reached Petersburg before Wayne had set out 
from York, Pennsylvania, on the march southward. 
^ Tower, ii, 293. 



MILITARY OPERATIONS 269 

The situation of the patriots was now very threatening. 
Nathanael Greene, the American commander in the Caro- 
linas, had refused to follow Cornwallis into Virginia and 
had taken the fateful step of marching South; the Old 
Dominion was left to such defense as might be devised. 
Cornwallis commanded a considerable and well-appointed 
army, especially strong in cavalry, while the only American 
force in the State of any consequence was Lafayette's small 
detachment of Continentals augmented by militia. The 
English general began his movements by advancing to the 
James, which he crossed at Westover. He reached Bot- 
tom's Bridge on the Chickahominy on May 28; ^ Lafayette 
left Richmond on May 27, with the British near at hand.^ 
He was in no little danger; the enemy by an energetic use 
of their cavalry might have held him until the main force 
could come up. The marquis, appreciating his position, 
began a rapid retreat northward to join Wayne, who was 
now known to be somewhere near at hand. Cornwallis 
wheeled in pursuit and paralleled the American line of 
march for several days, endeavoring to intervene between 
Lafayette and Wayne and bring the former to battle. On 
May 28, Lafayette crossed the South Anna and on May 30 
crossed the North Anna and was safe. On June 10, Wayne 
met him on the Rapidan, with one thousand Continentals 
of the Pennsylvania line. 

Cornwallis had given up the pursuit on June 1 and turned 
his attention elsewhere. He sent Tarleton on a cavalry raid 
to Charlottesville, whither the Virginia assembly had fled, 
and Simcoe to Point of Fork on the upper James, where the 
Virginians had assembled large military stores. Tarleton 
1 Tower, ii, 320. ^ Ibid., ii, 321. 



270 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

drove the assembly over the mountains to Staunton, but 
had no other success; Simcoe succeeded in frightening ofiE 
Steuben, who guarded Point of Fork, and burned the 
stores. This was a serious loss for the bankrupt Virginia 
government. Meanwhile the American army, which had 
been increased by Wayne to about four thousand men, 
was now strong enough to play with the offensive. La- 
fayette was no longer in danger from a cavalry attack and 
might even offer battle, provided he had exceptional ad- 
vantages. At least, he could prevent further British raids 
of any consequence; Cornwallis must keep his troops well 
in hand in the face of a formidable foe quite able to cut 
off detachments. Cornwallis fell back to the James River 
west of Richmond as Lafayette in turn advanced; on the 
latter's approach he turned eastward and passed through 
Richmond to Williamsburg. Lafayette followed,^ at first 
cautiously, but gradually with more boldness. Steuben 
joined him on June 19 with a militia array, raising his army 
to five thousand men, of whom two thousand were Con- 
tinentals. It was too heterogeneous and badly equipped 
an army, however, to be lightly risked in battle, though as 
a check and impediment on Cornwallis's movements it was 
invaluable. The conquest of Virginia was impossible as 
long as it existed. 

Lafayette's vigorous pursuit brought on several severe 
skirmishes with the British rear-guard. On one occasion 
Muhlenberg in the American van was set upon by Tarleton, 
but Lafayette threw his supports briskly forward and the 
dragoons retired. Anthony Wayne, who commanded the 
patriot advance, continued to press the British closely, 
1 Tower, ii, 342. 



MILITARY OPERATIONS 271 

fighting a skirmish at Spencer's Ordinary on June 26. On 
June 28, Cornwalhs reached WilUamsburg, where orders 
from Clinton met him. He was directed to send back part 
of his army to New York for CUnton's reinforcement and 
to take up a defensive position with the remainder. He 
thereupon moved south with the intention of going to 
Portsmouth; by sending his baggage across the James in 
advance of his troops he beguiled the Americans into be- 
lieving that his army had already passed over. Intent on 
cutting off the rear-guard, Wayne pressed forward across 
a long causeway through the swamps which line the river 
near Jamestown. Cornwallis remained perdu until Wayne 
entered the trap and then confronted him with the whole 
British army drawn up for battle. For a moment Wayne's 
danger was very great. His force doubtless would have been 
overwhelmed, if Lafayette, on reaching the scene of action, 
had not promptly brought up supports, which were for- 
tunately near at hand. Two battalions of Pennsylvanians 
created a diversion by charging the British center, thus 
giving Wayne the chance to withdraw. The affair at Green 
Spring was a sharply contested engagement, from which 
the Americans were exceedingly fortunate to escape with- 
out heavy loss. Tarleton later accused Cornwallis of slug- 
gishness in not following up his advantage the next morn- 
ing, and it does seem that the English general let pass an 
opportunity to dispose of Lafayette and bring his Virginia 
venture to a successful pause. 

As it was, the campaign had been a failure in a strategic 
sense, though Virginia's economic resources had suffered 
greatly. Cornwallis established himself at Portsmouth, 
while Tarleton went off on a brief plundering excursion 



272 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

through southern Virginia more productive of outrages 
on the inhabitants than of injury to the American cause. 
Lafayette, with an army still intact and growing, took up 
a position at Malvern Hill, later famous for the battle 
fought there in 1862. Virginia could not be called con- 
quered as long as a considerable American force still held 
the field; the State was weakened by a summer of march- 
ing and burning, but its resources were yet large. After 
a month of constant maneuvering Cornwallis had failed 
to bring on a battle and now held only the country at the 
mouth of the James. Indeed, the campaign, with the sub- 
sequent surrender, has drawn much hostile criticism on 
Cornwallis. That he was not a great strategist is true, but 
he was a competent tactician, and he gave the Americans 
more trouble than any British general. He organized a 
disciplined and mobile army with which he marched vast 
distances and fought a number of engagements, nearly al- 
ways with success. His invasion of Virginia was inevitable 
if the British wished to secure their conquests in the South; 
the patriots in the Carolinas could always count on aid 
from Virginia, which was sometimes of prime value, as in 
the King's Mountain expedition. The occupation of Vir- 
ginia would mean the subjection of North and South Caro- 
lina, as well as the possession of an excellent base for an 
attack on Maryland and Delaware. There were many pos- 
sibilities involved, and the chief blame for the British 
downfall should rest with Clinton, who sought to control 
New York and the South simultaneously with a force en- 
tirely too small once the French appeared in the field. The 
policy of sending out expeditions from New York to attack 
distant points was feasible only as long as the British 



MILITARY OPERATIONS 273 

held undisputed control of the sea. Loss of sea command 
would mean the exposure of some outlying detachment 
to a French-American concentration of overpowering size, 
and this was what occurred. Comwallis happened to com- 
mand the smallest and most vulnerable detachment and 
the blow fell on him. 

The moment was an anxious one for the French and 
American commanders; the play was theirs, but the selec- 
tion of the proper move was not so easy to determine. 
Washington had long cherished the idea of an attack on 
New York, but he now reluctantly abandoned this design. 
New York was diflScult to approach from the sea and was 
heavily fortified and well garrisoned. He therefore turnec! 
towards Comwallis, who held an exposed position on 
Chesapeake Bay far from the British bases at New York 
and Charleston. But a movement against Comwallis 
would necessitate the cooperation of the main French 
fleet, then lying off Haiti, with the French-American army 
on the Hudson, and furthermore the quiescence of Com- 
wallis himself, who could fall back on Wilmington unless 
cut off by a land force. 

De Grasse, the French admiral in the West Indies, agreed 
to cooperate' and sailed from Haiti to the Chesapeake with 
twenty-eight ships of the line and a large body of troops. 
In the mean time Comwallis had moved from Portsmouth 
to Yorktown on the York-James Peninsula, which he con- 
sidered more accessible to the sea. Lafayette remained at 
Malvern Hill until Comwallis's movement to Yorktown 
caused him to break up camp and advance to the Pamun- 
key River. De Grasse sailed through the Capes on Au- 
gust 30. By this time Washington was on his way to 



274 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Virginia, but still distant, and Lafayette was close at hand, 
but not actually present. It would seem, then, that Corn- 
wallis erred in not attacking the French troops when De 
Grasse landed them at Jamestown, for his force was much 
superior. He did consider an attack after the French had 
joined Lafayette at Williamsburg, but found the venture 
too risky. 

His fate was quickly sealed by the French naval superi- 
ority. On September 5, the British admiral Graves reached 
the Capes with a fleet not much smaller than the French. 
De Grasse at once put out to sea to meet him, and an in- 
decisive engagement followed, resulting in the crippling of 
several English vessels. During the action a small French 
fleet from Newport slipped into Hampton Roads, and when 
the French and English ships returned to the Chesapeake, 
Graves found the balance of odds against him; he therefore 
returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis unrelieved. 

But the latter had excellent chances of escape so long as 
he was blockaded on the land side by no more considerable 
a force than Lafayette's. His end drew near when Wash- 
ington arrived at Williamsburg, on September 14, and the 
allied army landed from the transports which had brought 
them from the Elk River at the head of Chesapeake Bay. 
On September 28, Washington moved to the vicinity of 
Yorktown and the trap had definitely closed on Cornwallis. 
The Englishman had counted on British sea power until it 
became too late to escape from the peninsula. The move- 
ment against Cornwallis was one of the most brilliant 
strategical combinations of the eighteenth century. Any 
one of a number of accidents might have frustrated the 
plan. If the English fleet had held the sea against De 



MILITARY OPERATIONS 275 

Grasse, Cornwallis would have received succor; if Corn- 
wallis had scented the danger and retreated south, the 
campaign would have ended fruitlessly. As it was, the 
cooperation between fleet and army was excellently timed 
in spite of the immense distances to be covered and the 
many possible interruptions, such as a sally by Clinton 
from New York. 

With the allied army in position before Yorktown, the 
surrender was a question of time. There was intrenching 
to be done and siege cannon to be mounted and redoubts 
to be taken at the point of the bayonet, but these things 
were parts of the inevitable military performance preced- 
ing a surrender in those days. Cornwallis finally threw up 
the sponge on October 19, 1781. The war thus closed in 
reality on Virginia soil. The campaign had proved a criti- 
cal one, and the French fleet and army were the decisive 
factors. Owing to the numerical inferiority of the British 
in the various fields of the war, the loss of this small army, 
which would not have been greatly felt under ordinary 
circumstances, secured the independence of America. The 
Whig Party, now in power in England, would no longer 
support a struggle which it had always opposed and which 
it looked on as a hopeless effort to bring back an irrecon- 
cilable part of the empire. 



CHAPTER XI 

END OF THE WAR 

When the British arms in Virginia collapsed in October, 
1781, desire of revenge rose high in the triumphant pa- 
triots. This was a natural if not laudable feeling. From 
Camden to Yorktown was by far the darkest year of the 
war in the South and the long-suppressed Tories began to 
raise their heads in Virginia. The real loyalists were few 
in comparison, however, with the time-servers who re- 
mained passively resistant to the government or carried 
on correspondence with the enemy and sold supplies at 
British posts, and with the genuinely criminal, who seized 
the opportunity for counterfeiting and horse-stealing af- 
forded by the British invasion. The patriot populace along 
the coast had suffered greatly from privateers and Tory 
freebooters, and in the Norfolk district a condition re- 
sembling civil war existed. Robbery and other outrages 
were perpetrated, apparently by both sides, but as the 
lawless and discontented element was Tory simply be- 
cause the government that aflSicted it with taxes and en- 
forced military service was Whig, most of the violence 
proceeded from so-called loyalists. Open opposition to the 
government continued around Norfolk until the end of the 
war and the day of reckoning. 

Local patriot leaders recommended strong measures. 
Colonel Thomas Newton wrote from Surry : — 

The Tories and Refugees below are still unpunished, to the 
great dissatisfaction of the well affected. Many of them were in 



END OF THE WAR 277 

arms plundering and now live in affluence while those who were 
engaged in their Country's service are ruin'd. I would not wish 
to persecute, but if some examples are not made, the encourage- 
ment is too great for many to withstand the temptation. Too 
many of the justices below were of the party to bring delinquents 
to account, but I hope some steps will be taken, to call the whole 
to trial by impartial men. It is really horrid to think that a man 
(one of our best soldiers) shou'd be taken out of a justice's house 
and murder'd, the justice knowing the persons and they never 
called to account for it. This matter has caused several other 
murders, as the friends revenge the death of their relations and 
acquaintances on both sides. ^ 

In some places the Tories were rather roughly put down. 
Colonel Wishart reported from Princess Anne : — 

I should have troubled your Excellency with this [resignation] 
some Time ago, had it not been that I was determined to seek 
vengeance on the Refugees and Tories of this Country (thro' 
whose means many Friends to the Country, with myself became 
sufferers) which, thank God with the assistance of Colo. Dabney, 
have pretty well effected.'^ 

A number of loyalists in Princess Anne and the neigh- 
boring counties suffered arrest and imprisonment. Various 
offenses were charged — bearing arms against the coun- 
try, forcing persons into the British service, and other 
treasonable practices. In Norfolk County the patriots 
imprisoned four men, "for going with the enemy"; and 
seven others were each bailed in one thousand pounds 
specie to appear before the council to answer the charge of 
disaffection. Similar measures were taken in other coun- 
ties. Besides arresting Tories, the patriots seem to have 
subjected them to minor annoyances. The ill-fated Ralph 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, ii, 693. ^ Ibid., ii, 611. 



278 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Wormeley declared that troops had been quartered on his 
estate in King William over a year and had maltreated his 
overseer. 

The government, thinking that examples were needed 
in the southeastern neighborhood, issued special trial com- 
missions for Nansemond, Isle of Wight, Norfolk, and 
Princess Anne, but men could not be found willing to act 
as judges, probably because of the danger to which they 
might be exposed in a country still glowing with the pas- 
sions of war.^ The council, on finding its efforts to estab- 
lish a special court of large powers vain, ordered offenders 
tried in the ordinary way. But there was one serious objec- 
tion to such a process; capital offenses including treason 
were tried, in the normal course of law, by the general 
court in Richmond and it was difficult to transport a great 
cloud of witnesses thither. Traitors there were in Norfolk, 
enough and to spare, "all taken up here and suflScient proof 
to hang many of them if the Court was to set here, but the 
witnesses have not money to bear their expenses to Rich- 
mond, and the most atrocious villians will escape by it 
(even murderers) if the public cannot provide some way 
of carrying the people up ... if these escape adieu to all 
order and Government in these parts. Some came to 
Princess Anne court with clubs a few days ago, but by 
spirited exertions they were quel'd." ^ Difficulty of pro- 
cedure thus stalled the efforts at prosecution. Plainly, it 
was impossible to try a large number of offenders at Rich- 
mond and just as impossible to try them in special courts 
when such courts could not be organized. It is true that 
John Scarborough Wills paroled one John Harrison, who 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, iii, 14, 15, ^ Ibid., in, 101. 



END OF THE WAR 279 

had been in the hands of the British, until the meeting of 
the special commission for the southeastern counties, but 
this was simply a cautionary manner of discharge. Ac- 
cording to Harrison's account, he had been forcibly carried 
off by the British as a guide, a plea commonly urged by 
suspects arrested for having intercourse with the enemy; 
there was just sufficient truth in the defense of compulsion 
to make it difficult to decide whether a man was a traitor 
or only a weak-kneed patriot. The council now abandoned 
all thought of bringing offenders to justice on a large scale. 
In January, 1782, it even allowed John Saunders, a con- 
victed traitor whose life had been spared on condition of 
working two years in the lead mines, to remain on his own 
plantation in Louisa. 

Some offenses, however, were too serious to be passed 
over without making the government seem weakly lenient. 
Such cases came before the general court, which began 
treason trials at the April, 1782, session, when Robert 
Smith, of Hampshire, and James Hughes, of Henrico, were 
sentenced to death. Smith, if he may be believed, was in 
no sense a loyalist, but took up arms in the Hampshire 
rising in order to obtain relief from oppressive taxes. The 
governor pardoned four Hampshire rioters, who, in con- 
formity with the assembly's pardoning resolution of June, 

1781, had not been tried; and pardons were also given a 
number of other Hampshire insurgents in prison. 

Smith and Hughes, the condemned traitors, were still in 
jail awaiting execution when the general court, in June, 

1782, likewise passed capital sentence on James Lamb, 
Joshua Hopkins, and John Ripley, of Henrico. In Lamb's 
case the court advised executive clemency, stating that he 



280 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

had been "convicted upon satisfactory evidence of the 
overt act of Treason charged in the Indictment; but it ap- 
peared in the course of the Evidence that the Criminal was 
actuated in this Conduct, rather from resentment against 
a party of men who belonged to a Boat called the Dasher 
and who had committed sundry unwarrantable outrages, 
on the persons and property of the Citizens of this State 
within the Enemies lines, than from a desire to assist the 
Enemy." ^ Lamb had joined a party of refugee loyalists 
in taking one Nathaniel Davis prisoner. At his trial he 
attempted, unsuccessfully, to show that he had been forced 
into the enemy's service,^ for this defense had become 
rather threadbare by this time. Lamb, Hopkins, and an- 
other condemned prisoner, one Caton, applied for pardon 
to the House of Delegates, which passed a resolution to 
that effect. The senate, however, failed to concur, and the 
three traitors remained under sentence almost to the date 
set for execution. 

The general court, at the October, 1782, session, sen- 
tenced to death Albridgton Holland, John Holland, Levi 
Moore, Dempsey Butler, and Henry Norfleet, all of Nan- 
semond, and WilUam Hill, of James City, and acquitted 
Benjamin Bucktrout, of York.^ But the court in all these 
treason cases acted not without thought of final clemency, 
allowing the condemned an unusually long time before 
death. The latter now united in a petition for pardon. 
They admitted their guilt, but according to their account, 
which is probably true, they had joined the enemy because 
of the despondency prevailing in southeastern Virginia in 

* Executive communications, 1782. 

^ Legislative Petitions. Princess Anne. 

^ Calendar of Virginia State Papers, in, 361. 



END OF THE WAR 281 

regard to the American cause, especially among the lower 
classes. Later on they had left the British and taken arms 
against them, but this circumstance had not protected 
them from indictment though it may have had some influ- 
ence on the success of their plea for mercy. ^ 

The case of William Hill, one of the convicted, illus- 
trates the temptations to which the poorer people were 
exposed during the British invasion. When the royal 
troops left Williamsburg, Hill happened to be looking for 
two stray cows and was accosted by a cavalryman, who 
insisted on his accompanying him and giving information 
as to the position of Lafayette's army. Hill refused, but 
the soldier carried him to a brandy-shop, made him drunk, 
and went home with him. His conduct had been observed 
and several patriots came to his house to arrest him; he 
escaped and lay in hiding in the woods for six weeks. Pa- 
triots came repeatedly to his home seeking him and hacked 
his horses with their swords. Finally, Hill, finding the 
chase growing warm, attempted to pass over into Isle of 
Wight, but could not cross the James at Burwell's Ferry. 
He fell into the hands of a party of British and was re- 
leased, only to be taken ui turn by Lafayette, who tried 
him and likewise set him free. In contradiction of his 
story, however, one of the witnesses testified that Hill had 
enlisted in Tarleton's legion.^ 

Prosecution for treason was dying out with the war. 
The general court, in December, 1782, tried, but failed to 
convict Adam Levitt, of Princess Anne, and Henry Bur- 
gess; ^ and in January, 1783, it considered the case of Isaac 

* Legislative Petitions, Nansemond (B3813). 

2 Executive communications, 1782. ^ Atiditor's Journal, xv, 579. 



282 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Riddle apparently the last treason trial of the Revolu- 
tion in Virginia. Mercy, in truth, followed hard on the 
heels of justice. The assembly, in the fall of 1782, par- 
doned Albridgton Holland, Henry Norfleet, John Caton, 
and Levi Moore on condition that they serve a year in the 
Continental army; and James Lamb and Joshua Hopkins, 
provided they left the State within two months, to return 
no more during the war. Dempsey Butler, the murderer 
of Nott, was also pardoned at the same time.^ If any man 
deserved death it was Butler, who, though a citizen of the 
State, had shot down in cold blood a Virginia oflBcer while 
in pursuit of duty, and it appears that the assembly acted 
over-leniently in letting him go. But it probably thought 
that severity in individual cases was out of place where 
there had been so many offenders, and that mildness would 
best heal the wounds of the war-worn community. In May, 
1783, it pardoned John Holland, seemingly the last man 
under sentence of death. Edmund Tallon had been a fel- 
low prisoner under the same sentence to a late date. 

Popular feeling against Tories did not die down as 
quickly as governmental resentment; it long outlasted the 
war. All through 1782 patriots were inclined to retaliate 
for injuries, and the troops continued to make impress- 
ments, which had been justified before by the gravity of 
the crisis, but which were always a most vexatious burden 
on the people. Needless to say, such seizures bore hardest 
on reputed loyalists. At length John Lowry, of Elizabeth 
City, ventured to sue Colonel Dabney for impressing four 
cows belonging to him. The military promptly retaliated. 
Lowry was arrested and tried and his plantation was 
1 Hening, xi, 129. 



END OF THE WAR 283 

plundered. On receiving his complaint, Harrison, the gov- 
ernor, ordered Dabney to remove his soldiers from Lowry's 
house, declaring his intention of protecting citizens from 
the violence of the troops, whose presence in the district 
was, however, necessary because some of the people con- 
tinued to supply the enemy with cattle/ Other Tories were 
likewise annoyed by the troops, but cases of violence seem 
to have been rare. 

Depredations of soldiers on the property of Tories and 
half-hearted citizens were possibly stimulated by the con- 
tinuance of hostilities on a small scale along Chesapeake 
Bay throughout the year 1782. Water- thieves and priva- 
teers swarmed in as great numbers as a year before when 
the chances seemed to favor the British cause. The ruin of 
the Virginia navy in 1781 permitted this state of warfare 
to continue long after it should have ceased; it ended only 
with the actual declaration of peace. Chief among the 
ravagers was a Scotchman who had adopted the appro- 
priate name of Kidd, and who swept the Chesapeake 
waters with a flotilla of small craft called barges and 
manned partly by British seamen and partly by Maryland 
and Virginia Tories, outlaws, and runaway slaves. These 
pirates plundered and burned out-of-the-way houses along 
the shore and committed outrages on the inhabitants. At 
length, in November, 1782, Commodore Whaley, of Mary- 
land, sallied forth against Kidd with a fleet of small craft 
similar to his, but being short of hands, put into Onancock 
Creek in Virginia for recruits. It happened to be court- 
day in Accomac and a crowd of people had gathered at 
the court-house, among them John Cropper, the county- 
» Letter-Book (1781-82), 251. 



284 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

lieutenant, who had been a noted oflBcer in Washington's 
army. This man raised a considerable force of volunteers 
on the spot and added a boat to the fleet. The commodore 
then ventured out into the Bay in search of Kidd, whom 
he ran across off Tangier Island just south of the line di- 
viding Virginia and Maryland. Both fleets were composed 
of barges, boats especially built for shallow navigation and 
fitted out with sails and oars and carrying guns of fair size. 
Whaley, who was a better fighter than strategist, sailed 
ahead of his other barges in the Protector, and ardently 
attacked Kidd's whole fleet single-handed. The enemy 
concentrated their fire on this vessel, with the result that 
she blew up, but not until she had succeeded in sinking 
four British barges. This accident decided the engagement. 
Whaley was killed, and Cropper, badly wounded, fell into 
the enemy's hands with the other survivors of the Pro- 
tector. The "Battle of the Barges," or Cagey's Strait,^ 
ended the warfare which had been going on in these ac- 
cessible waters ever since Dunmore's attack on Hampton 
in 1775. 

The closing months of the war witnessed one of its sad- 
dest phases — the forced exile of British subjects still re- 
maining in the State, and the barring-out of the poor ref- 
ugees who had begun to return from New York and other 
places on the approach of peace. Many loyalists with 
Cornwallis at Yorktown attempted to remain after the 
surrender, and others used various artifices to gain en- 
trance to the State. Business in one form or another served 
as an excuse for many merchants or agents anxious to find 

^ Southern Literary Messenger, xxiv, 215-21. Cropper had been Mor- 
gan's second in command and had won a great reputation. 



END OF THE WAR 285 

admittance, and no doubt some of them managed to evade 
the law. Others failed, as did James Riddell, a former 
Yorktown merchant, who had been taken prisoner and 
allowed to go to New York on parole, but returned in April, 
1782, to collect debts. On his arrival in Yorktown he was 
promptly ordered back on shipboard, possibly because he 
was a loyalist, possibly because he was a bill-collector. 

The government was much readier to grant permission 
to leave Virginia than to enter it, and a good many loyal- 
ists who had held out to the last seem to have gone off to 
British posts. William Andrews, a minister notorious for 
disafiFection, applied for a passport to leave the State, 
"where my conduct has been lately obnoxious." He com- 
plained that he, as well as a colleague named Bruce, had 
suffered unjustly in being accused as hostile, because the 
presence of the British at Portsmouth had necessarily 
made the whole population of the region appear lukewarm 
towards the patriot cause. ^ Andrews had been tried for 
treason, but had not been convicted, and the council 
finally granted him permission to leave the State with his 
family and several friends on condition that they did not 
return. Later on, however, the two ministers came back 
to Norfolk and resumed their professional labors without 
interference. Others also occasionally managed to return. 
The widow of James Hubbard, who had been allowed to go 
without proper authority from Williamsburg to New York 
to see her dying husband, asked leave to come back. The 
council granted Esther Muir permission to go to New York 
with her children, on condition of never returning. ^ 

* Calendar of Virginia State Papers, iii, 139. 
2 Council Journal (1782-83), 4. 



286 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Constant attempts at evasion of the laws forbidding 
intercourse with the enemy and the residence within the 
State of British subjects annoyed the government, Brit- 
ish shipmasters and merchants were the chief offenders. 
Thomas C. WiUiams, captain of a flag-of -truce brigantine 
lying at Yorktown, went to Richmond without permission 
on pretext of asking leave to stay in Virginia to settle 
accounts arising from transactions made at the time of 
Cornwallis's surrender. The council thereupon ordered 
Williams to return to his ship and immediately sail for 
New York on penalty of having it seized and of suffering 
imprisonment. Exasperated by this and similar incidents, 
Benjamin Harrison, the governor, on February 4, 1782, 
ordered British merchants remaining in Virginia under the 
terms of the surrender to wind up their affairs and those 
who had overstayed their leave to sail for New York. 
Many Britons managed to escape the order. Harrison, on 
May 22, 1782, directed the Surry militia commander to 
require all British merchants in his county to go without 
delay to Hampton to take ship for New York.^ The gov- 
ernor, in July, 1782, sharply reproved William Mitchell, 
flag-of -truce oflficer at Yorktown, for allowing the British 
brig Alexander to go to Norfolk to buy slaves and refit. 

Congress added to the embarrassments of the Virginia 
government in attempting to rid the State of enemies by 
entering into an agreement with British merchants in New 
York to supply them with tobacco. Virginia, of course, had 
to furnish the commodity, and the British ships that were 
to carry it put into Hampton. Harrison applied to the 
assembly to know whether an agreement so dangerous as 
» Council Journal (1781-82), 70. 



END OF THE WAR 287 

the opening of trade with the enemy should be carried out; ^ 
the government eventually allowed the tobacco to be ex- 
ported under rigid conditions. When a vessel flying the 
white flag sailed up the James River from Hampton, Har- 
rison put a guard of troops on board her to prevent traffic 
with the people. Such precautions were necessary, as the 
State teemed with Englishmen and refugees in spite of all 
efforts to drive them out. Harrison ordered the command- 
ing officer at Portsmouth, in September, 1782, to seize 
John McLean, a British subject, and deport him to New 
York; and sent out similar orders to other commanders. 
The smuggling-in of refugees in flag-of-truce ships finally 
grew to be such an annoyance that Harrison applied to 
the attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, to know whether 
ship-captains could be proceeded against for the offense, 
and received a negative reply. 

The assembly at the fall session of 1782 attempted to 
remedy the evil by passing an act prohibiting intercourse 
with British subjects and forbidding their admission to the 
State. 2 This act required special leave from the governor 
before the opening of any communication with a flag-of- 
truce, on pain of fine and imprisonment. British subjects 
coming into the State, unless shipwrecked, and British 
subjects who had come in after January 1, 1782, and had 
not become citizens, were to be held as prisoners. Harrison 
had secured this law in his determination to prevent the 
influx of undesirable foreigners and Virginia refugees, who 
grew more and more insistent in their efforts to gain en- 
trance as the war visibly wore away. The governor wrote 
Benjamin Grymes in August, 1782, concerning one 
1 Letter-Book (1781-82), 137. 2 Hening, xi, 136. 



288 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

Nicholls, for whom Grymes had interceded, that he had 
no doubt Nicholls was a worthy man, but that even if the 
law allowed one connected with the enemy to become a 
citizen he could not receive him because of the swarm of 
similar applications sure to follow. The council, in Sep- 
tember, 1782, advised the governor to refuse all future ap- 
plications of British subjects to be allowed to stay in the 
State, ^ and such appeals were rejected. Dr. Middleton, a 
former surgeon in the American army who had accepted 
British protection, was not only refused leave to remain, 
but was guarded until he left Virginia. The governor, on 
December 19, 1782, issued a proclamation ordering civil 
magistrates, county-lieutenants, and militia officers to ar- 
rest all British subjects within their jurisdiction. A num- 
ber of such persons, he declared, continued in the State 
because of the mistaken indulgence of local civil and mili- 
tary authorities and might estabhsh a Tory party and 
alienate the people from the government. 

When the war finally came to an end in 1783, refugees 
fairly plied the government with applications for permis- 
sion to return. Now that the British were no more enemies, 
even after the apathetic fashion of 1782, the exiles stood 
on a different footing; they were no longer possible spies 
and belligerents. Many had made themselves obnoxious 
to the patriot government, but they hoped for indulgence 
notwithstanding this. Among them were John Wormeley, 
of the well-known loyalist family. Dr. Alexander Gordon, of 
Norfolk, and John Goodrich, Jr. The government allowed 
Mrs. Goodrich to come back to Virginia with her children, 
but forbade her husband's landing. He had sinned too 
1 Letter-Book (1781-82), 250. 



END OF THE WAR 289 

deeply for forgiveness. John Wormeley, who had served 
as an officer in the British army, gained leave to remain 
at Yorktown until the next ship sailed for New York. He 
expressed a desire to become a citizen, but the council, 
while admitting that he was not literally a traitor, since 
he had never taken the oath of allegiance to the State, 
viewed him in another light than that of an ordinary 
enemy. Dabney, the officer commanding at Yorktown, let 
Wormeley go into the country for a visit, ^ for which im- 
prudence the governor reprimanded him. Ralph Worm- 
eley, the father, then petitioned the assembly to admit his 
son to citizenship. The young man, so he said, had been 
in Scotland for a mercantile education before the breaking- 
out of the war. Forced by the cutting-off of home remit- 
tances at the beginning of hostilities to return to America, 
he entered the British army in New York and saw service 
in South Carolina, where he married. The usual plea of 
kindness to American prisoners in New York was advanced 
in his behalf. 2 At the same time, Presley Thornton, who 
had likewise been sent to England for an education and 
had accepted a commission in the British army, asked 
leave to become a citizen. The assembly admitted Worme- 
ley, Thornton, and another applicant, Philip Turpin, on 
taking the oath of allegiance, expressly excluding Worme- 
ley, however, from holding any office for four years. 

The people were less tolerant of unpopular refugees than 
the government, which had begun to relax immediately 
at the end of the war. Mob violence occasionally attended 
the appearance of a loyalist venturing back in the hope 

1 Council Journal (1782-83), 297. 

^ Legislative Petitions. Westmoreland. 



290 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

that peace settled all scores. Thomas Hepburn, who had 
left Virginia early in 1776, attempted to resume his resi- 
dence at Port Royal and was waited on by a self-consti- 
tuted committee of citizens and informed that he must 
leave the State. A meeting in Petersburg in 1783 urged the 
government to enforce the law forbidding refugees and 
British subjects from settling in Virginia, and a petition 
went to the assembly from Essex in May, 1783, opposing 
the return of loyalists. Probably some mobbings occurred 
of which we have no account. The best-known case of 
violence offered a returned refugee was that of Joseph 
Williamson, in October, 1783. Williamson had once been 
a merchant at Tappahannock, but went over to the Brit- 
ish, and attempted, it is said, to bring tenders up the Rap- 
pahannock to burn the town. After the war the council 
granted him permission to return, and he brought a cargo 
of goods to Tappahannock for sale, but in spite of his 
oflBcial sanction a mob tarred and feathered him after he 
had ignored a warning to leave. ^ The council, irritated by 
this outrage in defiance of its authority, ordered a prose- 
cution in the general court. The participants appealed 
in great alarm to their representative in the legislature, 
Spencer Roane, who secured for them an act of immu- 
nity. 

Such deeds of violence as the mobbing of Williamson 
were rare in Virginia, which, unlike almost all the other 
States, had been only to a slight degree the scene of inter- 
party warfare. The great mass of the population had no 
such humiliations and injuries to revenge on Tories as had 
the people North and South; in fact, the loyalists in Vir- 
» Council Journal (1782-83), 290. 



END OF THE WAR 291 

ginia were much more sinned against than sinning. Con- 
sequently it is not surprising that the level-headed Vir- 
ginia assembly in the fall of 1783 magnanimously repealed 
the laws forbidding Tories to return to the State, with the 
exception of those who had taken an active part in the war. 
Prohibition of intercourse with British subjects was like- 
wise and as a matter of course withdrawn. The repeal did 
not pass, however, without opposition. Anti-loyalist feel- 
ing was strong enough to array a considerable part of the 
legislature against measures of toleration, but Patrick 
Henry pleaded the cause of the exiles in one of his best 
speeches and carried the day.^ It was fitting that the great 
agitator who had done so much to bring on the Revolu- 
tion should close it with a plea of mercy for his defeated 
opponents. 

A good many peaceful exiles who had fled abroad, or had 
been driven out of the State during the course of the war, 
now returned in the hope of recovering their forfeited 
estates. Most of them were doomed to disappointment, 
though sometimes a child or other relative received what 
had been taken from the loyalist emigre. There were other 
cases like that of Alexander McCall, of Essex, who had 
gone abroad in 1775 and had not returned within the two- 
year limit allowed by the Virginia government, with the 
result that his own estate was confiscated and that of his 
infant daughter jeopardized by her absence in England. 
The assembly, when appealed to, decided that Catherine 
McCall might claim the estate if she returned within the 
legal period.^ While a number of refugees returned and 

1 Henry's Patrick Henry, ii, 192-96. 
* Legislative Petitions. Essex (A5351). 



292 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

some new citizens came in from the British Isles, the great 
majority of the hundreds of men who had gone away on 
account of the war never came back. In actual numbers 
Virginia lost less heavily than the other States, but at 
that she lost nearly the whole of her mercantile class. In a 
purely agricultural community, much exhausted by the war 
and greatly depleted by emigration to Kentucky, the loss 
was irreparable, and from this time Virginia, which before 
the Revolution had been one of the least provincial of 
colonies, began to narrow in her interests and life. 

A last and most vexatious question remained as the 
direct heritage of the Revolution. The Treaty of Paris, 
among other concessions, granted British debtors the right 
to recover debts in the United States, while, on the other 
hand. Great Britain agreed to assist slave-owners in recover- 
ing runaway and kidnapped slaves. Immediately after the 
conclusion of peace, several Virginians went to New York 
to secure lost slaves, but received small encouragement 
from the authorities, and this cool attitude of the British 
was generally resented by planters. At the May, 1784, ses- 
sion of the assembly, Madison and Richard Henry Lee, 
mindful of treaty rights, attempted to repeal the legisla- 
tion still barring the recovery of British debts. Henry 
opposed them, however, and induced the legislature to 
declare that it would not repeal the prohibitory laws until 
England made reparation for breaking the treaty in regard 
to runaway slaves. The English government retaliated by 
refusing to surrender the Lake ports to the Americans. 
When the Virginia legislature reassembled in October, 
1784, the question came up again and a bill providing for 
the payment of British debts in installments was debated, 



END OF THE WAR 293 

but failed by a small margin.^ The matter of debts had 
now become serious, since the refusal of Virginia and other 
States to allow recovery suits had given England an excel- 
lent pretext for continuing to hold the Western posts and 
foster designs upon the great territory which is now the 
Middle West. Congress appealed to the States to repeal 
legislation barring the treaty fulfillment, and in October, 
1787, George Mason and George Nicholas offered a repeal 
bill in the Virginia assembly, but Henry, the determined 
advocate of the debtors, again defeated a measure so gen- 
erally obnoxious. The Constitution of 1787 ended such 
efforts of States to nullify treaties, and a number of suits 
were brought by British merchants in the federal court in 
Richmond when it opened for business in 1790. The de- 
fendants employed John Marshall and Patrick Henry, who 
had effectively championed their cause from the beginning. 
Henry, by his genius and personal influence, managed to 
hold off decision in several cases until 1794, but in the end 
a number of suits were instituted and a good many judg- 
ments secured. The debts recovered were but a "drop in 
the bucket" of the liabilities standing against the Virginia 
planters in 1775, and the end of procedure found the British 
creditors a generally defeated class. It could not well have 
been otherwise. Virginia, after the terrible drain of war, 
was in no condition to discharge claims which would almost 
have bankrupted her in the days of her colonial prosperity. 
For many people the canceling of debts was the practical 
benefit conferred by the Revolution. 

1 Henry's Patrick Henry, ii, 233. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY 

The treaty of peace removed the external danger of con- 
quest, but it was the signal for the renewal of the political 
contest which had been going on in Virginia ever since 1765 
and which had reached a climax in 1776. The pressure of 
war and the necessity of suppressing Toryism had pre- 
vented violent party divisions after that year, though in 
1779 the conservatives took advantage of Jefferson's re- 
moval from the assembly to attempt a partial restoration 
of the established church, and in 1781 they obtained con- 
trol of the governor's oflfice when Jefferson's failure as a 
war executive became evident. 

The restoration of peace removed the restraint which 
the need of harmonious action in a time of crisis had placed 
upon the two wings of the patriot party. At last conserva- 
tives and democrats might fight for the mastery without 
fear of outside complications. They might now decide 
whether the social revolution that had begun in 1776 should 
go further, or whether the Old Dominion should revert to 
the conditions of the colonial period. If Jefferson had re- 
tained his popularity and the active leadership of the dem- 
ocratic party, it is not likely that the conservatives would 
have felt themselves strong enough to attempt reactionary 
legislation, but Jefferson was living abroad in eclipse and 
the conservative party, in his absence, was stronger than 
its rival. 



THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY 295 

Several circumstances combined to brighten the outlook 
for the conservatives in 1784, when the contest began. 
Although a number of western counties had been created 
during the war, the conservatives still held control of the 
tier of small tidewater counties, and as counties were 
equally represented in the House of Delegates, the eastern 
section had as many members as the populous central and 
western districts. Then again, the conservatives counted 
on their side the most influential leaders. Some of them 
were of the planter type, like John Tyler and Benjamin 
Harrison, while others were brilliant young lawyers such 
as Henry Tazewell and John Marshall, the future Chief 
Justice. Towering above these stood Patrick Henry and 
Richard Henry Lee, who were now opposing the Revolu- 
tionary development as warmly as they had advocated the 
Revolution itself in 1775. Henry and Lee fought each 
other for the leadership of the assembly from 1782 to 1784 
and then joined hands in an effort at a conservative res- 
toration. They were rivals, but they had much in com- 
mon besides their hatred of Jefferson. 

As it chanced, religion was the issue on which the strug- 
gle turned. The Anglican Church had been well-nigh 
ruined by the loss of tithes and the upheaval of the war, 
but the planters were still mainly Anglican in belief and 
they had come to appreciate the value of the church as a 
social bulwark. Formerly dissenting communions like the 
Presbyterians and Baptists had also rather lost than gained 
by the war, while freethinking abounded. Indeed, democ- 
racy more and more tended to be associated with unbe- 
lief and hostility to organized worship. Jefferson himself 
shared this rather superficial skepticism, which flourished 



296 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

like a green bay tree in Virginia in the last decades of 
the eighteenth century and then withered suddenly and 
completely early in the nineteenth. In making their stand 
on the religious question, the conservatives were combating 
at a vital point the leveling principle now beginning deeply 
to influence the illiterate masses throughout the State. 

At that time probably none of the American States had 
absolutely severed political and religious connection; cer- 
tainly New England had some distance to go before reach- 
ing religious liberty. Many serious-minded men felt that 
Virginia had ventured far enough in the direction of liberal- 
ism and that faith itself was endangered. Consequently, 
strong support arose for the movement to reestablish state 
patronage of religion when the end of the war once more 
allowed men to turn their minds towards internal matters. 
There was no question of the restoration of the Anglican 
communion as the single state church, for the Presby- 
terians and Baptists were too numerous to make such a 
thing possible. But it was practicable to lay a tax on prop- 
erty for the general support of religion and to apportion 
the proceeds among the various churches; and it was in this 
form that Henry presented the question to the assembly 
when it met in Richmond for the May, 1784, session. 

The spring debate was preliminary. At the fall meeting 
of the assembly a resolution approving an "assessment," 
or tax for religious support, passed the House of Delegates, 
and a bill levying such a tax was introduced and fiercely 
debated.^ On this occasion Patrick Henry was opposed by 
James Madison and George Nicholas, who had taken the 
leadership of the democratic party. Both of them clearly 
' Separation of Church and State in Virginia, 85. 



THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY 297 

realized the danger to individualism involved in such a 
paternal measure as the religious assessment; they fought 
it with determination and energy. Nevertheless, Henry 
had a small majority in both houses, and the bill would have 
passed if the orator had not accepted another election to 
the governorship at the critical moment, November, 1784. 
We do not know the real reason for Henry's abdication of 
his leadership at the very threshold of decisive success. It 
is highly probable that his opponents wished to get rid of 
him by electing him governor, but he was too astute to be 
misled by an obvious ruse. Henry probably acquiesced in 
his election because he saw that any form of religious re- 
straint would soon prove highly unpopular with the dem- 
ocratic majority in the State, and by becoming governor 
he was able to free himself from a dubious policy. At all 
events, with Henry out of the way, Madison succeeded in 
postponing final action on the assessment to the next meet- 
ing of the assembly. 

Both sides now appealed to the people, and Madison 
wrote his noblest paper in advocacy of complete separation 
of church and state. His supporters worked feverishly 
through the central and southern counties in the summer of 
1785 and to such effect that when the assembly met in the 
fall religious taxation was buried beneath a pyramid of 
adverse petitions. "^ Madison took advantage of the op- 
portunity to bring forward Jefferson's Bill for Religious 
Freedom, which had been shelved since 1779. It passed 
without difficulty. Virginia thus became one of the first 
states in the world completely to divorce religion from 
politics, 

1 Separation of Church and State in Virginia, 109. 



298 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

This victory of liberalism was quickly followed by a 
wave of democratic enthusiasm. The effort to halt the 
Revolution had failed; it was destined to go forward to its 
logical conclusion. In the same year, 1785, the first move- 
ment for the abolition of slavery arose in Virginia. It 
proved abortive, of course, but it is a proof of the progress 
of radicalism. In the following years democratic social and 
political ideas continued to grow, although there was still 
a strong conservative element in the tidewater. 

The struggle over the adoption by Virginia in 1788 of 
the United States Constitution is not without its puzzling 
features. The westerners, the great upholders of individ- 
ualism, generally opposed it, while the tidewater planters, 
who imagined they saw a hope for themselves in the cen- 
tralizing tendencies of the Constitution, favored it. By 
such an apparent inversion of position as often occurs in 
politics, Patrick Henry led the anti-Federalists in the in- 
terests of States' Rights and democracy, and Madison be- 
came the successful leader of the Federalists. Henry made 
the most brilliant fight of his career on this occasion, but 
ratification was carried by a small majority and was dis- 
tinctly a victory of the planter reactionaries. 

The success of the Federalists was not followed by a 
conservative ascendency in Virginia as in Massachusetts. 
The principles of democracy were too passionately held by 
the great majority of men in all sections of the State to 
allow a return to the rule of the planter oligarchy. As soon 
as it became evident that the new Union was no rights-of- 
man government, but a highly conservative political and 
social structure, discontent broke out among the Virginia 
democrats. Thus, when Jefferson retired from Washing- 



THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY 299 

ton's Cabinet he found the material existing for a party- 
opposed to FederaUst ideas, and he spent the next few 
years in its organization. In this manner the Democratic- 
Republican Party came into being. 

The democratic impulse was immensely quickened by 
the French Revolution. Virginia, which had experienced 
a real contest between the forces of conservatism and lib- 
eralism, welcomed with enthusiasm the stimulating Gal- 
ilean propaganda. Indeed, the Old Dominion was trans- 
formed thereby. It became the fashion in the North in a 
later age to sneer at the inconsistency of the Revolutionary 
generation in preserving the institution of slavery, though 
subscribing to the Declaration of Independence dogma 
that all men are created free and equal. This inconsistency 
is more apparent than real. That the statement was meant 
to apply in a political rather than a social sense, we all, of 
course, now understand; but it also had a very practical 
social application. The Revolution changed the attitude 
of the mass of Virginia people towards the negro race and 
the transformation lasted until the end of slavery. In the 
colonial era slaves were looked on as little better than brute 
beasts and were frequently treated with great cruelty. 
The law was absolutely callous, and a great number of poor 
blacks suffered execution for trifling thefts such as after- 
wards came to be good-naturedly looked on as a mere 
African weakness, or froze to death in jail awaiting trial; 
others were outlawed and killed on sight like wild animals. 
The records are full of these cases. But in this treatment of 
the blacks the Virginia people were in no sense more cruel 
than the rest of the world; it was the world, we must re- 
member, in which men were hanged, drawn and quartered, 



300 THE REVOLUTION IN VIRGINIA 

broken on the wheel and decapitated for comparatively 
trivial offenses, with an iron disregard for human suffer- 
ing the present age cannot understand — the antediluvian 
world before the egalitarian deluge. 

The Revolution changed all this. After 1785 a strong 
and persistent abolitionist sentiment existed in Virginia, and 
would probably have predominated but for the almost 
insuperable practical obstacles to emancipation. Popular 
feeling forced the government to permit private emancipa- 
tion, which proceeded on such a scale that the institution 
of slavery was seriously threatened. The assembly inter- 
vened in 1816 to save it by requiring freedmen to leave the 
State within a year of manumission, and the practice of 
freeing slaves at the death of masters lessened.^ 

Gradually the democratic wave, which began in 1776 and 
reached high-water mark about 1795, spent its force. It 
had wrought great changes, but it was not destined to 
achieve a permanent triumph. Democracy in Europe had 
received a deathblow by the overthrow of Napoleon in 
1815 and America felt the effect of the reaction. In Vir- 
ginia other reasons contributed to the checking of liberal- 
ism. The development of the South and West drew from 
the Old Dominion its best young manhood and brought on 
a disastrous economic competition; Virginia lost rank as 
the greatest of American States and rapidly sank to a sec- 
ondary position. It was no longer a land of energetic and 
forward-looking men, but of memories, a place of social 
amenities and soft dreaming. Under the influence of Sir 
Walter Scott's novels glorifying the feudal age, the new 
generation constructed in imagination a colonial past of 
^ J. II. Russell's The Free Negro in Virginia, 70. 



THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY 301 

splendor which had had small counterpart in reality. The 
old English and aristocratic spirit revived and existed 
alongside the democratic theories of government which 
Jefferson had introduced. Jefferson's name was revered 
while his influence dwindled.^ Much, indeed, of the hu- 
manitarian teaching of the Revolution continued to per- 
meate society and slavery was softened by this influence to 
the end, but the fact remains that in Virginia the swing- 
back from democracy was steadily increasing in momen- 
tum from the fall of Napoleon to the Civil War. 
» W. E. Dodd'3 Statesmen of the Old South, 70. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Accomac Committee, tries Captain 
Kellam, 116; complains of ex- 
posed situation of county, 128. 

Accomac Court-House, riot there, 
253; 283. 

Agnew, Rev. John, case of, 107; 
loyalist, 129. 

Albion, 181. 

Alexander, Captain Charles, 108. 

American Revolution, movement 
with two aspects, 1 ; causes of, in 
Virginia, 39; begun in Virginia by 
planters, 121; its first stage in 
Virginia completed, 147; accom- 
plished in Virginia without 
cruelty, 155; its two phases in 
Virginia, 174; humanizes Vir- 
ginia, 300. 

Andrews, Rev. William, 285. 

Anglican Church, after war, 295. 

Arbuthnot, Admiral, 266. 

Aristocracy, of Virginia, rise of, 5. 

Arnold, Benedict, threatens Rich- 
mond, 221 ; ascends James River, 
213, 264; succeeds Phillips in 
command, 268. 

Assembly, of Virginia, independ- 
ence of, 3; powers of, 4; confis- 
cates loyalists' estates, 188; at- 
tempts to raise means of defense, 
209; amends law against Tories, 
241; pardons western malcon- 
tents, 242. 

Assessment, for religion, 296. 

Attainder, of Josiah Philips, 192. 

August Convention (1774), elec- 
tion of delegates to, 34; begin- 
ning of Revolution in Virginia, 85. 

Augusta, draught riot in, 249. 



Baptists, 13, 295, 296. 

Barron, Captain James, captures 
transport, 94. 

Barron, Captain Richard, 135. 

Bedford, riot in, 249. 

Bill for Religious Freedom, intro- 
duced, 172; passes legislature, 297. 

Bill of Rights, 164. 

Billy, case of, 259. 

Bland, Richard, on rights of the 
subject, 8; answers Bishop of 
London, 10; sketch of, 11; later 
pamphlets of, 13; theory of in- 
ternal government, 14; opposes 
Patrick Henry on Stamp Act, 18; 
inspirer of Henry, 22; member of 
Committee of Safety, 56. 

Boucher, Rev. Jonathan, loyalist, 
129. 

Braxton, Carter, member of Com- 
mittee of Safety, 56; 131. 

British Army, 82, 262, 264, 265, 273. 

British debts, 292, 293. 

British fleet, bombards Norfolk, 86. 

British Parliament, connection of, 
M'ith colonial government, 4. 

Brunswick Committee, summons 
Allan Love, 106. 

Bucktrout, Benjamin, 280. 

Butler, Dempsey, 258; condemned 
to death, 280; 282. 

Byrd, William, loyalist, 129. 

Byrd, Mrs. William, 245. 

Cabell, William, member of Com- 
mittee of Safety, 56. 

Cagey's Strait, 284. 

Calloway, James, puts Bedford riot- 
ers in jail, 249. 



304 



INDEX 



Camden, Virginia militia at, 210. 

Camm, John, in war of pamphlets, 
10; advances unpopular theory, 
13; wishes a colonial episcopate, 
30; loyalist, 129. 

Campbell, Dr. Archibald, 131. 

Campbell, William, hangs British 
spy, 234; suppresses Tories, 236. 

Caroline Committee, seizes sus- 
pected letters, 115; advertises 
suspects, 118; seizes effects of a 
loyalist, 132. 

Carrington, Paul, member of Com- 
mittee of Safety, 56. 

Carter, Landon, answers Bishop of 
London, 10. 

Caton, John, 282. 

Cheat River, 233. 

Cherokees, put down by militia, 
246; expedition against, 261. 

Chesterfield Committee, 97. 

Chesterfield Court-House, training 
camp, 210. 

Christian, Colonel Isaac, in Chero- 
kee expedition, 261. 

Clark, George Rogers, ambushes 
Arnold, 265. 

Claypole, John, raises an insur- 
rection, 246; asks for pardon, 
248. 

Clergy, sympathize with American 
cause, 106. 

Clinton, Sir Henry, turns south- 
wards, 262; to blame for Corn- 
wallis's capture, 272. 

Cloyd, Major Joseph, 239. 

Collier, Admiral Sir George, 262. 

Colonial system, advantages of, for 
ambitious men, 6. 

Commissioners, report of, concern- 
ing burning of Norfolk, 88. 

Committee of Safety, permits Cor- 
bin to visit Dunmore, 55; elected 
in July, 1775, 56; moves against 
Dunmore, 67; selects Woodford 



to command against Dunmore, 
75; central executive, 110; appel 
late court in loyalist cases, 117 
represents conservative party 
124; eastern element preponder 
ates in, 125; acts with caution 
126; given ample powers, 126 
decides to send troops against 
Dunmore, 127; reappointed on 
December 16, 1775, 131; orders 
loyalists to leave Norfolk, 140; 
becomes appellant court, 142. 

Confiscation, adopted in Virginia, 
187; effect in Virignia, 190; in- 
sufficiently carried out by Jeffer- 
son, 201. 

Congress, embarrasses Virginia, 
286. 

Conservative party, advoca,tes 
measures in 1774, 34; conspicu- 
ous in formation of county com- 
mittees, 43; in March, 1775, Con- 
vention, 46; strength of, in 
March, 1775, Convention, 47; 
reluctant to break with Dun- 
more, 53; delays Revolution, 124; 
fatally affected by independence, 
160; fundamentally different from 
progressive, 161; defends primo- 
geniture, 170; attempts to re- 
establish chiu-ch, 172; comes into 
power, 228; beaten by spirit of 
the age, 229; revives at end of 
war, 294. 

Constitution of Virginia, 164. 

Continental Association, adopted, 
36; rigidly enforced in Virginia, 
38; attempt to bulldoze Britain, 
40; committees formed to enforce, 
41, 44; rigorously enforced by 
committees, 98; violations, 101- 
02; first test of Revolutionary 
politics, 105. 

Corbin, George, unable to quell Ac- 
comac riot, 253, 



INDEX 



305 



Corbin, John Tayloe, loyalist, 130; 
writes seditious letter, 150. 

Corbin, Richard, goes to see Dun- 
more, 55; loyalist, 119. 

Cornwallis, Earl of, invades Vir- 
ginia, 268; strong in cavalry, 
269; falls back to Williamsburg, 
270; traps patriots at Green 
Spring, 271 ; fails in strategy, 272; 
errs in not attacking French, 274; 
surrenders, 275. 

Council, begins work, 174; prefers 
mild measures, 176; moderate in 
treatment of loyalists, 180; orders 
removal of suspects from Eastern 
Shore, 184; takes further steps 
against disaffected, 185; paroles 
loyalists, 186; offers reward for 
capture of Philips, 191. 

County committees, beginning of, 
43; act on own authority, 45; 
blockade Norfolk, 61 ; letter con- 
cerning their activities, 65; con- 
trolled by planters, 96; how 
chosen, 97; enforce Continental 
Association, 98; driven to sup- 
press disafifection, 105; regulate 
life of communities, 108; act on 
own responsibility, 109; open 
mails, 115; blockade Norfolk, 
116; allow loyalists no chance to 
concentrate, 121; succeeded by 
more regular tribunals, 147. 

Courts of inquiry, supersede county 
committees, 147. 

Creeks, 261. 

Cropper, John, concerning Lyon, 
254; joins Commodore Whaley, 
283. 

Curie, Wilson, 139. 

Curtis, John, 253, 255. 

Debts, confiscated by State, 188. 
December Convention (1775), met 
by complaints, 127; withdraws 



consent for native Britons to re- 
main neutral, 132; mild towards 
loyalists, 134. 

De Grasse, Admiral, sails to Chesa- 
peake Bay, 273; fights Graves, 
274. 

Democratic Party, real genesis of, 
2; overborne by conservatives, 
228. 

Destouches, Admiral, 266. 

De Tilly, 265. 

Digges, Dudley, member of Com- 
mittee of Safety, 56. 

Dinwiddle Committee, asks advice, 
139. 

Dunmore, Earl of, dissolves as- 
sembly in May, 1774, 33; seizes 
the colony's powder, 49 et seq.; 
pays for the powder, 51; declares 
Henry an outlaw, 52; flees 
aboard a warship, 54 ; goes to Gos- 
port, 59; his military resources, 
61; seizes printing-press in 
Norfolk, 64; offers commissions 
freely, 66; opens hostilities, 67; at 
Kemps ville, 69; administers oath 
of allegiance, 70; effect of his 
emancipation proclamation, 73; 
intrenches at Norfolk, 78; unwise 
to make stand at Norfolk, 79; 
sends regulars against patriots, 
81; partly responsible for de- 
struction of Norfolk, 87; driven 
from Gwynn's Island, 94; con- 
cerning county committees, 109. 

Dye, Fauntleroy, 256. 

Ellegood, Jacob, loyalist, 130; ap- 
peals for relief, 143. 

Essex Committee, 109. 

Established church, attacked by 
Jefferson, 170. 

Fairfax, Bryan, loyalist, 129. 
Fairfax, Lord Thomas, loyalist, 129. 



306 



INDEX 



Federal Constitution, adopted in 
Virginia, 298. 

Finances, 202. 

Fort Nelson, 263. 

Fredericksburg, volunteers meet 
there in 1775, 50. 

French Revolution, bears resem- 
blance to American, 159; its in- 
fluence on Virginia, 299. 

Garrison, William, 253, 255. 

Gloucester Commissioners' Coiu-t, 
147. 

Goodrich, Bartlett, 149; 177. 

Goodrich, John, sketch of, 138; 
sent inland, 155; escapes from 
jail, 177; estate managed by com- 
missioners, 178. 

Goodrich, John, Jr., 149; wishes to 
return to Virginia, 288. 

Goodrich, Margaret, 178. 

Gordon, Dr. Alexander, 103; 137; 
288. 

Governor, of Virginia, powers of, 4. 

Graves, Admiral, fails to relieve 
Cornwallis, 274. 

Great Bridge, important strategic 
point, 80; engagement at, 82-83. 

Greene, Nathanael, marches South, 
269. 

Green Spring, engagement at, 271. 

Grymes, Benjamin, 287. 

Grymes, John, loyalist, 130; re- 
ceives letter from Wormeley, 144. 

Grymes, Philip, 255, 257. 

Halifax Committee, administers 
test oath, 118. 

Halifax court, reports British sub- 
jects, 180, 181. 

Hampshire Court-House, trial of 
mutineers at, 248. 

Hampton, skirmish at, 60. 

Hanover Court, reports British 
subjects, 180. 



Harrison, Benjamin, candidate for 
Speaker, 172; elected governor, 
228; issues proclamation, 286; 
wishes to prosecute Tories, 287. 

Harrison, John, 279. 

Harrison, Richard, summoned for 
feasting on fast day, 116. 

Hatton, Walter, summoned for se- 
ditious letter, 115. 

Henrico Court, reports British sub- 
jects, 180. 

Henry, Patrick, appears in parsons' 
cause, 12; member of House of 
Burgesses, 15; takes lead against 
Stamp Act, 17; first leader of 
Democratic Party, 22; most 
striking figure in Virginia history, 
23; in March, 1775, Convention, 
46, 47; baffled in March, 1775, 
Convention, 48 ; marches on Wil- 
liamsburg, 51; passed over by 
Committee of Safety, 74; dis- 
trusted as soldier, 76; stirs poor 
people into activity, 121; elected 
colonel of the First Virginia Regi- 
ment, 124; proposes radical in- 
dependence declaration, 161; 
letter to John Adams, 162; letter 
to Richard Henry Lee, 162; be- 
comes governor, 167; mediocre 
administrator, 175; on Philips 
case, 193; replaced by Jefferson, 
195; becomes Conservative, 228; 
pleads cause of exiles, 291; pre- 
vents repeal of anti-debt laws, 
292; defends debtors, 293; joins 
Lee in advocating support of reli- 
gion, 295 ; elected governor again, 
297 ; leads fight against Constitu- 
tion, 298. 

Hepburn, Thomas, driven from 
State, 290. 

Hill, William, 280. 

Hinton, William, 232, 233. 

Holland, Albridgton, 280; 282. 



INDEX 



307 



Holland, John, 280; 282." 

Hopkins, Joshua, 279; 282. 

House of Burgesses, of Virginia, de- 
velopment of, 4 ; western element 
in, 7; loan oflBce bill, 16; meets as 
Convention, 45; meets in June, 
1775, 53. 

House of Delegates, expels British 
merchants, 179; debates anti- 
loyalist bill, 186; attaints Philips, 
192; proposes retrenchment, 203; 
passes resolution to investigate 
Jefferson's administration, 226; 
conservative party in, 295; de- 
bates religious assessment, 296. 

Howe, Robert, joins Woodford, 83; 
issues proclamation, 84. 

Hughes, James, 279. 

Hunter, Betsey, summoned for 
writing letter, 115. 

Innes, Colonel, 252. 
Isle of Wight, patriots tar and 
feather loyalists, 71. 

Jefferson, Thomas, describes Stamp 
Act debate, 19; influences Bill of 
Rights, 164; political beliefs, 168; 
initiates reforms, 169; in religious 
controversy, 171; revises laws, 
171; ascendant in Virginia, 172; 
elected governor, 195; industrious 
executive, 199; ignorant of mili- 
tary affairs, 200; letter on confis- 
cation, 201 ; letter toSamuel Hunt- 
ingdon, 204 ; lays an embargo, 205 ; 
unable to bring government to 
order, 206; letter to Speaker, 208; 
writes to Gates, 211; caught un- 
awares, 213; letter concerning 
requisitioning, 215; letter to 
Spotswood, 217; assures North 
Carolina of aid, 218; letter to 
Lafayette, 218; letter to Richard 
Henry Lee, 219; handles militia 



badly, 220; letter to Muhlenberg, 
221; unable to raise more troops, 
222; opposes dictator, 224; at- 
tacks on his administration, 225; 
at low water mark of career, 226; 
recovers power, 230; writes about 
loyalists, 237; concerning Shoe- 
maker, 243; writes concerning 
Claypole's rising, 247; orders pa- 
roled citizens to leave, 251 ; orders 
suspects sent to Richmond, 252; 
endeavors to isolate British posts, 
252; failure of, gives conserva- 
tives new chance, 294; founds 
Democratic-Republican Party, 
299; loses influence in Virginia, 
301. 

Johnson, Andrew, 181. 

Jones, Joseph, member of Commit- 
tee of Safety, 131. 

July Convention (1775), elects 
Committee of Safety, 110; stops 
exportation. 111; raises money, 
123. 

Kempsville, skirmish fought there, 

68. 
Kidd, Captain, 283, 284. 
King George Committee, disarms 

non-jiu-ors, 119. 

Lafayette, Marquis, arrives in 
Richmond, 221; retreats, 222; 
ordered to Chesapeake Bay, 265; 
saves Richmond, 268; retreats 
northward, 269; follows Corn- 
wallis, 270; at Green Spring, 271; 
at Malvern Hill, 272; advances 
toPamunkey, 273. 

Lamb, James, 279; 282. 

Lee, Charles, Major-General, comes 
to Virginia, 90; letter to Pendle- 
ton, 91. 

Lee, Richard Henry, rise of, 16; 
applies for a Stamp Act oflSce, 24; 



308 



INDEX 



organizes the Westmoreland As- 
sociation, 26; originates commit- 
tees of correspondence, 33; ad- 
vocates boycott in Continental 
Congress, 36; becomes conserva- 
tive, 228; joins Madison to repeal 
anti-debt laws, 292; joins Henry 
in advocating support of religion, 
295. 

Lee, Thomas Ludwell, member of 
Committee of Safety, 56. 

Lee, William, 212. 

Leslie, General, invades Virginia, 
212; occupies Portsmouth, 264i. 

Lewis, Andrew, commands patriots 
at Gwynn's Island, 94. 

Liverpool, British warship, 89. 

Loan office, plan of, 16. 

Lowry, John, 282. 

Loyalists, take part in struggle for 
Norfolk, 58; in Dunmore's force, 
82; appeal to patriot command- 
ers, 85; Charles Lee's letter con- 
cerning, 91; everywhere in Vir- 
ginia, 105; ordinance against, 
117; helpless in face of patriot 
majority, 120; leave Virginia in 
large numbers in 1775, 119; lead- 
ing in Virginia, 129; convention 
proceeds against, 130; proceeded 
against by May Convention, 137; 
ordered to leave Norfolk region, 
140; mostly exiles by 1776, 153; 
treated with greater harshness, 
179; revive activities, 184; suffer 
confiscation of estates, 187, 188; 
revive in west, 232; travel in 
bands, 234; defeated at Shallow 
Ford, 239; increase in number, 
242; few actual ones in 1781, 250; 
suspected of having an intelli- 
gence system, 257; imprisoned in 
1781, 259; proceeded against 
after Yorktown, 276 ; escape pun- 
ishment in southeastern Virginia, I 



278; barred out from Virginia, 
285 ; few mobbing cases at end of 
war, 290; allowed to reenter 
State, 291. 

Ludwell, Lucy, 189. 

Lynch, Charles, terrorizes loyalists, 
238. 

Lyon, Rev. John, 254. 

McCall, Alexander, 291. 

McDowell, Samuel, writes to Jeffer- 
son, 222. 

Madison, James, contributes to Bill 
of Rights, 164; wishes repeal of 
anti-debt laws, 292; opposes state 
support of religion, 296; writes 
his Remonstrance, 297; leads 
Federalists, 298. 

Malvern Hill, 272. 

March Convention (1775), struggle 
in, 46; begins organization of 
government, 110. 

Marshall, John, defends debtors, 
293. 

Mason, George, typical of liberal- 
ism, 7; writes boycott agreement, 
29; member of Committee of 
Safety, 56; 131; author of Bill of 
Rights, 1C4; offers religious com- 
promise, 173; 293. 

Matthews, General, begins paroling 
citizens in Virginia, 251. 

May Convention (1776), increases 
penalties for disaffection, 137; 
sends prisoners to local courts, 
152; releases two prisoners, 156. 

Mercer, James, member of Com- 
mittee of Safety, 56. 

Merchants, unenthusiastic for Con- 
tinental Association, 100; dis- 
contented with measures of con- 
vention, 111; lose sympathy with 
Revolution, 114; petition against 
exportation, 112; many leave 
Virginia in 1775, 119. 



INDEX 



309 



Middlesex Committee, exonerates 
John Parsons, 10-1. 

Militia, organized, 110; defects of, 
219. 

Mitchell, William, 286. 

Montgomery, loyalist outbreak in, 
238. 

Moore, Levi, 280; 282. 

Morgan, Zackwell, 233. 

Muhlenberg, Peter, Major-General, 
commands in Virginia, 210; col- 
lects troops for defense, 211 ; com- 
mands troops, 266; opposes 
Phillips, 267; commands Amer- 
ican van, 270. 

Nansemond Committee, tries two 
merchants, 104; denounces John 
Agnew, 107; summons Betsey 
Hunter, 115. 

Neilson, Charles, 149, 150. 

Nelson, John, letter to Jefferson, 
219. 

Nelson, Thomas, nominated for 
governor, 166. 

Nelson, Thomas, Jr., gathers mili- 
tia, 211; elected governor, 227; 
man for the crisis, 229; commands 
at Williamsburg, 265. 

Newton, Colonel Thomas, letter 
concerning Princess Anne, 257; 
writes concerning Tories, 276. 

Nicholas, George, attacks Jefferson, 
225; 293. 

Nicholas, Robert Carter, opposes 
Patrick Henry on Stamp Act, 18; 
in the powder case, 50; opposes 
independence, 158; candidate for 
Speaker, 172. 

Non-importation association, in 
Virginia in 1770, 29. 

Non-importation agreement, adopt- 
ed by August Convention, 35. 

Non-jurors, suffer fines, 182. 

Norfleet, Henrv, 280; 282. 



Norfolk, fortified by Dunmore, 78; 
disaffection of, 84; entered by 
patriot army, 84; bombarded by 
British fleet, 86; destroyed, 87- 
88; Howe concerning destruction 
of, 89; continued embarrassment 
to patriots, 140; loyalists im- 
prisoned there in 1781, 277. 

Norfolk Committee, in case of 
James Marsden, 108; denies 
Dunmore's charges, 109; (Bor- 
ough), against stoppage of ex- 
ports, 113. 

Northampton Committee, com- 
plains to Congress, 66; against ex- 
ports, 113; gratified by conven- 
tion, 139. 

Northumberland Court-House, riot 
at, 240. 

Nott, Captain, 258. 

Oath of allegiance, required of all 
males, 182. 

Oldmer, George, 148; 177. 

Orange Committee, burns pam- 
phlets, 107. 

Page, John, member of Committee 
of Safety, 56; 175. 

Page, Mann, 259. 

Paper money, issued by July Con- 
vention, 123. 

Parker, Joseph, reports on loyalists, 
258. 

Parsons' cause, in Hanover court, 
12. 

Pendleton, Edmund, opposes Pat- 
rick Henry in Stamp Act, 18; 
chairman of Committeeof Safety, 
56; sketch of, 126; reelected chair- 
man of Committee of Safety, 131; 
president of May Convention 
(1776), 150. 

Petersburg, 267, 268. 

Peyton, Sir John, 258. 



310 



INDEX 



Philips, Josiah, case of, 190 et seq. 

Phillips, Major-General, 221; 266; 
267; 268. 

Phripp, Matthew, loyalist, 130; 
131; 133. 

Pistole fee, case of, 8. 

Pittsylvania Committee, summons 
John Pigg, 106. 

Planters, take sides against Eng- 
land, 26; unitedly patriotic in 
Virginia, 37; resist England rath- 
er than lose liberties, 40; begin re- 
sistance to England, 96; organize 
colony against England, 100; 
political thinkers, 101; begin 
Revolution in 1774, 121; decide 
unitedly for independence, 158; 
a debtor class, 188. 

Portsmouth, Dunmore uses as a 
base, 90; Leslie lands at, 211; 
Arnold encamps at, 214; Arnold 
establishes himself there, 245; 
attack planned against, 266; 
visited by Cornwallis, 271. 

Posey, Major Thomas, writes about 
Augusta riot, 249. 

Presbyterians, 12, 295, 296. 

Preston, William, concerning dis- 
affection, 234; appeals for help, 
237 ; reports lead mines in danger, 
238; reports bad situation in 
Montgomery, 240 ; declares Mont- 
gomery to be disaffected, 249. 

Primogeniture, eliminated by Jeffer- 
son, 170. 

Prince George Committee, in case 
of James Marsden, 108. 

Prince William, first minute com- 
pany there, 110. 

Princess Anne, disaffected ordered 
to leave, 140; Tories arrested 
there in 1781, 277. 

Princess Anne Committee, protests 
against banishment ordinance, 
141. 



Privateers, 255; 283. 

Privy Council, of England, in fee 
dispute, 8 ; decides against minis- 
ters, 13. 

Progressive Party, comes into exist- 
ence, 23; measures approved by, 
in 1774, 34; presses for Revolu- 
tionary methods, 124; differs 
from conservative, 161. 

Public jail, at Williamsburg, report 
on, 154. 

Pungoteague, 254. 

Randolph, Edmund, Jefferson's rep- 
resentative, 165; mentions Philips 
case, 193; 287. 

Randolph, John, loyalist, 129. 

Randolph, Peyton, opposes Patrick 
Henry on Stamp Act, 18; ring- 
leader in boycott agreement, 29; 
elected chairman of meeting in 
Apollo Tavern, 33; president of 
the Continental Congress, 35; 
in the powder case, 50. 

Richmond, sacked by Arnold, 214; 
saved by Lafayette, 268. 

Riddle, Isaac, 281. 

Ripley, John, 279. 

Ritchie, Archibald, loyalist, 130; 
accused of violating Association, 
142; 256. 

Robinson, John, sketch of, 15; be- 
comes a defaulter, 10. 

Rockingham, disaffection in, 236. 

Roebuck, British warship, 89. 

Rootes, Philip, loyalist, 130. 

Rose, William, 259. 

Salaries of ministers, suspended, 

171. 
Saunders, John, case of, 106. 
Schau, John, first loyalist mobbed, 

62. 
Shallow Ford, engagement at, 239. 
Shoemaker, Joseph, 243. 



MAV (M<^.^ 



INDEX 



311 



Simcoe, Colonel, 265; destroys 
stores, 269. 

Sir Walter Scott, his influence on 
Virginia, 300. 

Slavery, saved by legislature in 
1816, 300. 

Smallwood, General, 264. ' 

Smith, Robert, 279. 

Spotswood, Alexander, proposes 
military plan, 216, 218. 

Sprowle, Andrew, British quarter 
themselves on, 62; loyalist, 129. 

Squier, Captain, begins hostilities, 
59. 

Stamp Act, cause of protest against 
taxation, 3; Virginia leaders op- 
posed to, 15; opposed by Henry, 
17; Henry's speech on, 20; extent 
of resistance to, uncertain, 24; 
resistance to, in Williamsburg, 
25 et seq.; repeal of, fatal to royal 
authority, 27. 

Steuben, Baron, becomes com- 
mander in Virginia, 214; holds off 
British, 221; heads troops at 
Cabin Point, 265; resists British 
invasion, 267. 

Suffolk, naval stores burned there. 



Tabb, John, member of Committee 
of Safety, 56. 

Tallon, Edmund, 282. 

Tangier, Island, 284. 

Tarleton, Lieutenant-Colonel Ban- 
astre, 269; goes to Charlottes- 
ville, 269; attacks patriots, 270; 
criticizes Cornwallis, 271; raids 
Southside, 271. 

Test Oath, adopted by convention, 
118. 

Thornton, Presley, 289. 

Tinsley, Joshua, 182. 

Tories. Sec Loyalists. 

Twopenny Act, compounds tobacco 



debts in money, 10; device of rul- 
ing clique, 13. 

Vanmeter, Garrett, writes of mu- 
tiny 246. 
Viomenil, Baron, 266. 

Walker, Thomas, member of Com- 
mittee of Safety, 131. 

Wardrobe, David, 99. 

Washington, George, presents boy- 
cott agreement, 29; arrives at 
Williamsburg, 274; determines to 
attack Cornwallis, 273. 

Wayne, Anthony, detached to join 
Lafayette, 268; meets Lafayette, 
269; fights skirmish, 271 ; in dan- 
ger at Green Spring, 271. 

Weedon, General, 265. 

West, influence of, in Virginia, 15. 

Westmoreland Committee, in 
Wardrobe case, 99. 

Whaley, Commodore, 283. 

Wheler, Maurice, 175. 

Whitehurst, Joshua, 137. 

Williamson, Joseph, mobbed at 
Tappahannock, 290. 

Willoughby, John, 133; 148. 

Wills, John Scarborough, 278. ' 

Wilson, John, Norfolk county-lieu- 
tenant, 191. 

Wingate, Rev. John, case of, 107. 

Wishart, Colonel, suppresses Tories, 
277. 

Woodford, William, commands Vir- 
ginia forces, 75 ; advances to Nor- 
folk, 77; issues proclamation, 84. 

Wormeley, John, 288, 289. 

Wormeley, Ralph, Jr., loyalist, 129; 
writes seditious letter, 144; re- 
leased from parole, 176; 255. 

Wythe, George, opposes Patrick 
Henry on Stamp Act, 18; elected 
Speaker, 172. 

Yorktown, siege of, 274. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
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